bkgexe

[bkgexe]

"i miss him" says girl about the fictional guy she thinks about every hour of every day

[bkgexe]

kiri loses a bet (mina gets to dye his hair pink 🙂‍↕️)

[bkgexe]

nobara

[bkgexe]

i do think in certain situations wolfwood’s yearning for you reaches truly pathetic levels where he sees a sliver of skin on you that he doesn’t often see and it does something for him and he’s like fuck 🚬🚬 new level of low

[bkgexe]

[bkgexe]

rotary devotion

caleb (love and deepspace) x reader ✾ part 1/2 ✾ 15k (35k total)

✾ info! “I wish I could see into your head,” you murmur, freeing one hand from his grasp and tapping a finger against his forehead, right between his eyebrows.

“You don’t,” he says, because god, you don’t. He’s the exact kind of man that he wants to protect you from. But he’s also the only man that can protect you right.

✾ tw! yandere-adjacent activities typical of caleb... like he's doing that already and he's not even sorry about it. f!reader referred to w/ gendered language and she/her pronouns.

✾ notes! ohhhh man. this is just an exploration of how they exist together. massively angst with a happy(ish) ending. smut in part two, published now. read on ao3 if u would prefer!!!!

When you were younger, Caleb loved your hair. He would detangle it for you, dry it after a wash day, braid it when you wanted any specific style. He was careful with you always. If he accidentally pulled to the point of pain, he would massage your scalp with his fingers until the ache went away. He would apologize and ask you to forgive him, even though he already knew the forgiveness was assured.

The first thing you do when you get home from Skyhaven is cut it off. 

You wanted to do this when you joined the Hunter Association. You’d been growing your hair out since the Chronorift Catastrophe—most of it had gotten burnt off. As you aged, it grew long and healthy and Caleb was fixated on it, always patting your head, asking to help style it, keeping stray strands out of your face with gentle fingers. But it was long and you needed it out of the way for work, so cutting it was the most obvious thing to do.

And then Caleb died, and it didn’t feel right. To lose him and then cut away the memories of him sitting with you while he took the time to braid it carefully from scalp to ends, of bickering with him and laughing with him and reveling in the feeling of his strong hands turning gentle just for you.

You want to scream. You want to cry for hours and hours. You want to kill him and make sure he’s actually dead, to validate the grief you went through and the grief you’re still experiencing.

When you’re done, the floor around you is carpeted with hair, so much that you can barely see the tiling beneath. It’s just longer than shoulder-length now, enough to tie up so it doesn’t get in your face. You’ve been back home from Skyhaven for maybe an hour. You can still see Caleb on the airway saying goodbye, certain that you hate him for everything he’s done, everything he’s kept from you.

You should hate him. You should. You look at the forgiveness coupon that Caleb slipped into your belongings where you’d set it on your bathroom counter upon getting home. You should, and you sit on the floor in the pile of hair you’ve left behind because you don’t know what else to do.

You should and you can’t. 

You see him again a couple of weeks later and it’s still painful. It’s like seeing a ghost, like you’re hallucinating something you’ve wanted for months. But it’s wrong because it’s real. It’s wrong because it’s not him, somehow, even though it is.

“Pip-squeak—what did you do?” he asks.

You didn’t think you’d run into him here—you’re helping a shopkeeper empty out her store before sale. You were a regular as a child, and you remember her vividly from when you used to coyly ask for a caramel before leaving even though you didn’t have the allowance to pay for it. She usually relented. If she didn’t, Caleb would buy one for you anyway. “Don’t call me that.” 

The nickname is so ridiculous. You’ve always hated it but you hate it even more now, because it’s this new Caleb that’s using it as if he’s anything like your Caleb. He’s a sick imitation at best.

He says your name like this is all a joke, as if you’re just pushing back to push back, as if—surprise!—he’s been fine this whole time and now everything is okay. “Too grown-up for nicknames, huh?” he teases.

You continue your task of packing left-over merchandise into a large box, deciding not to respond. There’s a lump in your throat that’s too thick to swallow around.

“Your hair was so pretty.” He sounds so nostalgic that your brain stutters, your hands stilling for a moment. “Well—still is. Of course you’d look good with any hairstyle,” he says, like that’s the most obvious thing in the world, and he reaches out from where he leans on the counter, watching you, to pull at the ends of your hair.

You flinch back, instinctually moving to push his hand away, but he catches your wrist. You haven’t forgotten the way he held you down in Skyhaven—the things he said. How he wants to keep you, protect you in his odd, twisted way. He managed to hold you completely still without bruising your wrists, and his hold is very similar to what it was then. Firm and unyielding, but not punishing. Not yet. There’s an edge in his eyes that tells you it could get there.

Here is something terrible and secret: as much as you hate him for leaving you, for treating you the way he has since he’s been back in your life, there is some small, rotten part of you that loves it. When you confirmed that he was alive—that he was alive , and you grieved him for so long —your instinct told you to hold him in your jaws and bite down hard. To make sure he could never leave you again without leaving a sizable chunk of flesh behind. It’s a relief to see that mirrored in him. It makes you feel less insane. 

You’ve loved Caleb for your whole life. Of course you have. He’s been everything to you.

You loved him every time he asked you to pretend to be his girlfriend so he could complete his studies in peace. You loved him past his graduation, where you’d kissed his cheek in front of the entirety of his graduating class to stake some sort of claim on him. You loved him when he worked for the DAA, when his hours were so frantically busy that you barely got a phone call from him once a week. You loved him when he was on leave, when he came to visit you and Gran and smiled so brightly at you despite how exhausted you could tell he was. You loved him when he died. Past that. You loved him when he reappeared in your life, when he refused to explain how he survived, why he hadn’t contacted you, the terms of his new employment with a shady agency.

Being touched by him now is hard because it makes you remember this. It makes you remember the way you feel and the way you should feel.

His grip on you loosens, that odd gleam in his eye petering down to only a spark. His thumb, careful and soft, swipes across the inside of your wrist. You pull away before he can realize he’s given you goosebumps. “Why’d you cut your hair?” he asks.

You resume packing the box in front of you, and you hate him. You hate him. You hate him. You remind yourself of this until it feels true. “What are you doing in Linkon?”

“You wanna do a question for a question?” he asks. “That was the only way I was ever able to get any info out of you when we were kids.”

“We’re not kids anymore,” you say, but what you really want to tell him is to stop reminiscing all the time. Stop bringing up the fact that you shared a childhood, that he was the most important person in your life before he died. You had just figured out how to live without him. Only some days. Only some hours, more often than not. You could go a little without thinking about him before you remembered and that same awful feeling of emptiness crept back in. “I cut my hair because it needed to be cut.”

In your peripherals, you see him lean further across the counter. His arms are crossed, fingers of one hand drumming against a toned bicep—he’s still wearing those god-awful sleeveless shirts, even now, as if nothing has changed—and you remember how working out with him had gotten more distracting as you’d gotten older, how you couldn’t stop noticing the way the rest of his body finally began to match his height, how you used to rest your hands on his shoulders before he gave you piggy-back rides and how those same shoulders used to be much less wide than they are now. 

“You seem to be awful deep in thought,” Caleb says, and your hands hadn’t been moving this whole time. “Something you wanna share?”

“You didn’t answer my question.” Your ears are burning. You hate that he makes you feel like a kid, like you’ve done something wrong.

“Oh, so we are playing,” he says, and you don’t have to look to know the grin he’s wearing. You know him like the feeling of your tongue against the roof of your mouth. You know him the way you know a shirt you’ve been wearing beneath a sweater all day. “Would it be a bad thing if I said that I came just to see you?”

“How did you know where I’d be?”

He clicks his tongue at you. “Nuh-uh. You have to answer my question first. That’s how it works.”

You give up on the box you’re packing and stand, turn to look at him. You hadn’t realized how little room was behind the counter. It seemed like such a large place when you were little, the glass jars filled with candies bigger than your whole body. Now, you pick the jars up with ease. Now, the space between you and Caleb is basically infinitesimal with the way he leans towards you, coaxed in like a moon.

You consider his question. “It’s a waste of a trip,” you tell him. “I’m busy. I can’t babysit you today.” You don’t say it’s a bad thing that he came to visit because you’d be lying. Or, in reality: it puts into perspective that it’s actually a terrible thing, because it makes you realize just how badly you want to see him.

“You don’t have to worry about babysitting me. I’m pretty self-sufficient,” he says. “Besides, I’m here to worry about you . Don’t they say that people only cut their hair this dramatically if they’re going through a crisis?” He eyes your hair, fingers curling against his bicep as if to stop himself from reaching out again. To stop himself from wanting to touch. From wanting at all.

Maybe that’s wishful thinking, but you’ve wished for much worse in regards to him. You’ve wanted him to want a lot more from you. “No crisis here,” you tell him, your voice betraying you in its hollowness. “You can go back to Skyhaven.” 

There’s frustration beneath his veneer of good humor. You’ve always been good at pushing Caleb’s buttons—he makes it a competitive sport to push yours. But the difference between the two of you is that he likes when you push his buttons. You’re not doing that right now. You’re not playing. You know from experience that he hates it when you refuse to engage. “What do you want me to do, pip?” The question is exasperated. Wheedling. Genuine, beneath that.

“Do not,” you repeat, voice hard like a coin, “call me that.” You cross your arms, staring a hole into the wooden counter. You hate the fucking nickname. Looking at him is hard. His favorite color is red and you hate making him sad. “And you didn’t answer my question. How did you know I’d be here?”

He shrugs, but now it’s him that won’t meet your eyes. “I have notifications for the neighborhood. I saw the post about this place shutting down and asking for volunteers to help. I figured you’d respond to it.”

It feels too neat. Too simple. You know he’s no longer a stranger to lying to you. But you want to believe him so, so badly—and truly, smothered under layers of common sense, you know that if it was something a little worse, you wouldn’t even mind. If he was keeping tabs on you. The thought puts electricity under your skin, makes you feel heavy the way you did when Caleb used his Evol to keep you in place back in Skyhaven. 

“Answer mine now?” It seems like he didn’t want that to be a question, but something in him is a little broken, a little loose. He can be demanding. You’ve seen it firsthand. But in this scenario at least, he’s aware that you can deny him what he wants. “What do you want me to do?”

“You used to tell me you’d never lie to me,” you say. “You promised me.”

“I’m not lying to you.”

“You’re not telling me the whole truth.”

“I’m protecting you,” he says, and the emotion behind those words is so emphatic that you get that heavy feeling in your stomach like you want to cry but can’t. It’s the way you felt the entire time you were in Skyhaven, reeling from the reveal that Caleb had never died. He reaches across the counter, forearm resting on the varnished wood, hand hanging off the edge as if waiting for you to catch it. “You know I’d tell you everything if I could.”

You don’t know that. You would have taken him at his word a year ago. Now, you’re not so sure. “If you’re not going to tell me what I want to know, then at least help me finish packing everything up.”

He nods and steps back from the counter. Gets this complicated look behind his eyes, the same look he used to get when you got older and told him you didn’t want to hang out with him as much. It wasn’t true—you just wanted him to prove how badly he wanted to spend time with you. “As you wish,” he says, back to grinning. The expression is boyish, charming, nothing like the person he was a few moments ago when he claimed to be protecting you. The sudden change gives you whiplash. 

There’s a stack of unfolded boxes leaning against the wall behind him, and he does as you ask—picks one up, folds and tapes the bottom, begins to pack up merchandise. There is only the sound of both of you at work for a few minutes, until Caleb clears his throat. “One more question.”

You try to bite back your sigh and fail massively. “Fine. What.”

“Did you think about me? When I was away?”

Your hands start shaking almost immediately. It’s all anger, all frustration and rage and a deep, cloying sadness that feels like his fingers against your scalp, that feels like him whispering sorry and meaning it. A summer night: you’re nineteen and Caleb is carefully taking apart your long braids during sunset on the porch at Gran’s house, fireflies dotting the sky, the smell of a bonfire and his sweat from playing basketball with his friends from the neighborhood, and it was the first time you ever wanted to kiss him. You felt so guilty, then. You feel the same way now. “Away,” you repeat.

He has stilled entirely. He’s that same boy that sat with you that night and noticed you looking at his lips when he got a little too close, who looked at yours right back, whose grip tightened on your hair enough to let you know that there was something there like want, even though you were never fully sure. He’s that same boy grown up, and at the same time he’s not . But he reacts like that boy would have—his face falls, and he knows he used the wrong words, and he opens his mouth because he always has something to say to fix a situation, to make you feel better.

But you don’t let him speak. “Caleb, you were dead . Do you understand that?”

“I—”

“Look at me,” you say, “and tell me that there is any possible way you could understand what I went through.”

He doesn’t speak.

“You were in Skyhaven becoming a colonel. I was…” You were reeling from the loss of your best friend. The man you quietly loved. You went to work every day and you fought Wanderers and took on missions but you weren’t really there . You weren’t awake. Everything was a dream, something you’d eventually wake up from, something you’d tell Caleb about after you went to his room to curl up in his arms. And he would reassure you, I’m not dead, I’m right here, I’m not going anywhere but you can still hold onto me tight if it makes you feel better , and you’d fall back asleep and never dream about this terrible reality again. 

“Of course I thought about you,” you say, and you don’t want to be telling him this. He doesn’t deserve to hear it.

He says your name very quietly, like an apology.

You can’t look at him. Your hands are still shaking. “You need to—I think you need to leave.”

He hesitates for a moment, seemingly torn between moving towards you to comfort you and keeping his distance because he knows that’s what you need. He’s so easy to read. He’s done the same thing since childhood, his protective instincts warring with logical reason. He settles on quietly asking, “Are you sure?”

“Yes,” you spit, the word a little more venomous than you mean it to be.

“I’m sorry,” he says. You know he means it. He always means it.

You nod. You can’t say anything else or you’re going to break. All you want is for him to hold you right now because nothing has ever calmed you down like his arms wrapped around you, his face in your hair, his big hands curling around your sides. 

He leaves. You sit there for a moment with the weight of his absence, and then you get back to work as if nothing happened. The same thing you’ve done every morning since he died.

˚✧ ﾟ.

The thing you don’t understand is that he really is sorry. Truly, completely, wholly.

When he woke up after the explosion, you were the first thing he thought of. The blood on your sleeve—how did that get there? How did you manage to get hurt when he was looking away for less than a minute? And why were you lying to him about it? He wouldn’t look away again. He wouldn’t let you out of his sight.

And then he felt the pain, and he wasn’t able to think about much else.

He sits in his office. There’s a small picture of you on his desk—now that he’s a colonel and he’s allowed personal effects at work—that he’s had for years. Summer, high school, when he had just graduated and you were about to be a sophomore. You in a pretty yellow dress he’d bought you with his allowance, lace at the neck. Too pretty for you to wear with anyone but him. He’d made you promise him. Only for special occasions with Gran or times when he came back to visit. The bottom right corner is notably matte against the gloss of the rest of the photo, faded from all the times he used to pull it out of his wallet just to look, stroking his thumb across the ruffled material of the knee-length skirt.

You’re at home. He has only one tab up on his computer that’s not Fleet business—the CCTV stream from the camera across from your apartment building. He made sure you got home safe, and now he’s just monitoring. Making sure no one shady shows up. 

You haven’t called or texted him since the last time he saw you, and he doesn’t want to text first to pressure you into coming back to him before you’re ready. He knows that you’re dealing with a lot. Knows that him coming back was hard on you. He’ll let you have the space you need. He just wants to make sure you’re safe.

And it’s not as if he’s watching you all hours of the day. He’s being reasonable. He just makes sure you get to work safe, get back home okay. Checks the messages you send to your colleagues with your post-battle reports to make sure you haven’t been hurt. Really, the messages shouldn’t be sent over an unprotected server, even if the documents themselves are highly encrypted. The Hunter Association should expect people to intercept and decrypt their documents if they’re going to operate with such low security standards.

He doesn’t look at anything personal, obviously. Doesn’t check your messages with other people, even though he sees a lot of suspiciously male names in your inbox. Doesn’t go through your drafts on any social media, even though he could. He wants you to have your privacy. (She would be so scared of you if she knew about this.) He doesn’t want to scare you.

Waiting is difficult. Especially when you post something for the anniversary of Gran’s death and don’t mention him. He understands, though—it’s complicated, now that you know he’s alive.

Gran wasn’t supposed to die that way. It wasn’t how the plan was put to him. It would have been later, when you’d gone back to the Academy, when he was at the DAA. You weren’t supposed to see it, and he certainly wasn’t supposed to get caught in the crossfire.

For a long time, he was so angry that Ever changed the plan. That they [                                    ]. [                                                         ] the trauma it must have inflicted upon you. [                                                                                          ] to help you, but [                                                                                                   ]. 

They had their reasons, he guesses. If you thought he was dead, if he wasn’t allowed to contact you, things would go smoother. He would’ve appreciated some heads up, but that’s not how things shook out. They needed Caleb to uphold his end of the bargain as quickly as possible. Of course, they’d let him see you again—he’d just have to reach a certain rank within the Farspace Fleet first. Attain a position of power so undeniable that the only people who could control him would be the very people that put him on this path. Living under Ever’s thumb.

Whatever they needed him to do he would do. Because you were going to die, and they were the only ones who could fix you.

The position itself doesn’t matter to him. He never cared about being in power. People usually do what he asks regardless. There’s a language to the way people move through the world—they look up to certain personalities, react well to certain stimuli. You used to call it charisma. Caleb would call it something worse, but you had always been the one to see him in a more positive light. 

He didn’t care that they needed him to do whatever was necessary to climb the ranks of the Farspace Fleet, which he did with brutal and vicious speed. He didn’t care when they made him [                                                                                                        ]. He didn’t care that they replaced his arm with cold metal, that they put a chip in his brain that steadily made him lose parts of himself that were deemed too caustic, too empathetic. 

Sometimes, though, he wonders. What’ll be left of him in a year? Five years? He knows there’s a lot missing, things he’ll never get back. He knows that’s the point of the chip. A perfect weapon can’t be appealed to like a human can. 

But if he’s going to be a weapon, he wants to be yours. He seals parts of himself away, constantly using his Evol to protect his brain against Ever’s technology. They don’t know he’s doing it, he doesn’t think. He’ll become whatever they need him to be—but he’ll never become something that could hurt you. He doesn’t care about anything but you. 

He didn’t care that Ever needed to tear him apart physically to turn him into what he is now, and he didn’t care that they wanted Gran dead. He was well aware that the two of you were little more than scapegoats for her, her guilt assuaged by your upbringing. She was the reason you were going to die, anyway. The experiments she and her group of scientists performed to augment the aether core in your heart did something unalterable, nigh impossible to fix. You’re a star on the edge of implosion, ready to rip itself apart with its own terrible power.

Your heart will give out in the next ten years, they told him, unless the aether core within is stabilized. Ever had the only scientists, the only doctors that could help you. They just needed a weapon in return. 

And Josephine hadn’t only created you, the angel that you are.

Sometimes he considers what he might have been like if he’d grown up unaltered by Gran’s experiments. If he’d have been able to crush a man’s heart, leaving no external wounds behind. If he’d have had the ability to flatten a spaceship in orbit. If his body would have been built to withstand the kind of G-force that could fatally pressurize the organs of a weaker man. 

Would you have liked him like that? Physically smaller, altogether weaker? (She only deserves the best. You have to be perfect for her.) Do his looks matter to you? Do you like him now, as he is? When other boys, looked at you at school, he [                                                                                          ]. [                                                               ] wouldn’t hurt them—for you. You wouldn’t want him to. But [                                                                                                                                           ]. He would walk you home and you would put your hand in his and he would always think: so beautiful. Of course he would protect you for the rest of his life. 

He sees the light in your apartment go on. Your bedroom, he thinks, but he really tries his best not to look. He wants to learn the layout of your apartment on your terms, when you invite him there yourself.

The report he needs to finish before he leaves the office sits in the same state it has for the past twenty minutes. He should finish it. He should go home, where he doesn’t have access to you like this. Where he can’t go through official channels and use the power he clawed into his own hands to assure your safety.

Because you wouldn’t like it. He knows you wouldn’t. (You’re going to scare her.) He should finish this report and go home and leave you to whatever it is you’re doing with the lights on in your bedroom this late. There’s a car outside the building, one he didn’t see pull up while he was zoned out, thinking about you. And now you’re awake, the light on in your bedroom. Potentially with someone else.

[                         ] your [                                                                 ]. You [                                                                                     ] your home [                                                                       ]. [                                                                   ]. [                                                                                                                 ]. [                                                                                                    ] treat you like you deserve. [                                                                                                                                                     ]. [                                                                                              ]. [                                                                 ] yours. Just yours. [                                                                                                                                                                        ]. [                                                 ] because you were pretty when you were younger but now you’ve grown into the kind of beauty he wants to feel on his tongue, and if [                                                                                                                                      ].

He’s on his knees on the floor of his office, lungs burning. His metal hand has rent a chunk of splintered wood from his desk. Breathe. He knows. This is what he has to do. Slowly, deep. Until he can feel the air touching the bottom of his lungs. He brings a gloved hand to his face, wipes away tears. This always happens when the neurons are burnt away. It’s an autonomic reaction, the way eyes water when the nose is hit hard enough. 

Sometimes the memories come back. Usually they don’t. Either way, he always feels a sort of emptiness in his head, a heavy weight of nothingness that will always remind him that he has masters he must answer to.

When his breathing evens out, he stands. Clears his throat. Places the jagged piece of wood torn from his desk on top of the void left in its absence, as if he could slide it back into place. As if his mistakes could be fixed that easily. 

His phone rings. He considers not even checking who’s calling him, but old habits are hard to quit. And he’s glad he listens to his gut—because your face is on his screen. The reason for the habit. His contact picture for you is from his graduation, when you’d worn the yellow dress he bought you and he nearly lost his mind watching other people notice you in it. (You have to keep her away from men that stare too much.) You’re standing next to Caleb, your arm looped through his, his uniform hat on your head. Looking up at him, smiling. And the way he’s looking down at you—he often doubts that there’s any way the people around the two of you could have been blind to his feelings. He wore them plain, looked at you like there was nothing more special in the universe. Because there isn’t.

He’s spent a long time in the Deepspace Tunnel. He knows the ins and outs of this universe better than many others. Nothing is as beautiful or precious as you. And you’re calling him after weeks of radio silence.

No one else is at your apartment. Just you. Calling him.

It doesn’t matter that parts of Caleb are being cleaved away like rotten meat. It doesn’t matter that he’s been stressed, barely sleeping, staying at the office much too late to keep an eye on you. It doesn’t matter that you needed so much more space than he thought you would. 

You’re coming back to him. He’ll take whatever pieces you allow him to have. Eventually, all of them will fall back into place—with him, where every part of you belongs.

˚✧ ﾟ.

When Caleb was at the DAA, you would call him when you had nightmares. You used to get them a lot—regular stress from everyday life compounded with the PTSD from the Chronorift Catastrophe. When your grandmother sent you to a therapist and you were diagnosed, you always secretly believed they were lying. Sure, your entire body locked up during thunderstorms because the cacophonous sounds reminded you of a Wanderer’s roar, and sure, you sometimes couldn’t feel comfortable in crowded places because of the increased vulnerability to attack, but those were regular anxieties that everyone had. They must be.

When Caleb left for Skyhaven, you realized how right the therapist was. Caleb’s familiarity granted you a sort of security blanket that kept you from the worst of your trauma, and you hadn’t realized that. You hadn’t understood how necessary it was to you that he was there, just one room over, in case you needed to sleep in his bed next to him when you were scared. Without him at home, things got exponentially worse.

You woke up one night heaving, sobbing at the memory of it all. At the feeling of your own broken bones, the sight of scattered limbs and the sound of screaming—the sound of burning. You’d never known that burning could be so loud. 

Calling Caleb was instinct, even though he was at the DAA. He had an exam the next day. You felt awful. But he stayed on the phone with you until you could breathe normally, until the tears stopped. He offered to fly home to be with you if you needed him, despite the fact that he was in no way allowed to do that.

And you had needed him, but you knew there were limits. You couldn’t need him right by your side forever. There was going to be a point where you would have to let him go. And you’d thought, then, that you would one day reach that point. That it wouldn’t hurt. That it would be logical and reasonable and your heart would allow you to follow the logic and reason as it usually did.

But things were different with Caleb. Logic and reason never won out. It was always feeling, instinct. 

This nightmare is different. It’s Caleb right before the explosion, looking at you and telling you that he isn’t going to cover for you anymore. The blood on your sleeve, your wrist held in one big hand, like when you were kids. Except you’re not both coming home from the store, like you were in real life. It’s you and he on the porch after he undid your braids, after you turned and looked at his lips for too long and he stared back. It’s after he let himself hold your face gently, as if he could want the same thing you did. What’s going through your head, baby? he asked. The first time he ever called you that. You were thinking about him kissing you.

But he didn’t. He didn’t kiss you then because he didn’t want to. And then you both went inside.

In the dream, it’s you in that house with them. It’s the explosion sending Caleb’s body flailing back, completely aflame, hitting the wall of the house loud enough to crack most of the bones in his body. It’s your name croaked out, hoarse and broken, by the remains of his throat. And the sound of burning that’s a constant in your memories. You know it the way you know a song you've heard too many times. An earworm, your Grandma used to call them. Burning, burning, burning.

Your phone is in your hands and dialing before you’re fully conscious, realizing it’s too late to undo what you’ve just done. He picks up on the second ring, says your name confused, his voice too close to the way it sounded in your dream for comfort.

“Caleb?” you ask, and it’s a plea and a question and something so much more than that. 

“What’s wrong?” he asks, the confusion stripped from his voice when he realizes you’re calling for something important, that you’re calling in the middle of the longest silence there has ever been between you two barring the absence after his death.

It doesn’t matter what Caleb he is right now—yours, or this new, strange man you feel so distant from—it’s still somehow him. “I had a nightmare,” you say, but you can hear the receding tide of panic that still steals its way into your breathing. “Can you talk to me? I know it's... it's childish. For me to ask.”

“It's not childish. We can talk,” he says, because he always makes time for you. “Or—you know what? Give me twenty minutes. I can fly down there. We can stay on the phone.”

There are about sixty airspace regulations that would make it extremely illegal and impossible for him to fly his personal plane down to Linkon and park anywhere near your apartment. And yet, for a moment, the thought tempts you. “No, you don’t have to do that. Please, just—talk to me. About anything.”

“You know I’m good at that,” he says. You hear him lean back in a chair and you wonder what part of his house he’s in. Whether you woke him from sleep or not. “I was actually just thinking about when I graduated from the DAA. You remember that?”

“It wasn’t that long ago,” you tell him.

“You have a famously bad memory, pip.”

“Remember when I called you dirt-boy when we were kids because you couldn’t stop getting food on your shirt every time you ate?” you ask. “That’s still very vivid. I can go back to doing that, if you want to carry on with the nicknames.”

“There it is. Second only to the famously bad memory: the famously bad attitude,” he teases, and he doesn’t have to be here for you to see the curve of his smile, the way his eyebrows quirk upwards in delight, the way his whole face lights up when he’s having a good time talking to you. “Guess even a rude awakening can’t dull your tongue.”

You see: Caleb’s body, the house burning, blood and ash on your hands. His hands on your face. The first time he called you baby. “I guess not.”

The line is quiet for a moment. You wonder if, in the weeks of silence, he’s been laying in the bed where you slept during your brief stay at his home. You wonder if he’s washed the sheets, whether or not they smell like you. “It was a pretty bad one, huh?”

“They’re all bad,” you say.

He’s quiet for a moment. You hear the shifting of clothes, a door opening and closing. “I’m coming down there. If I’m on the phone it’ll take twenty. If I’m off I can make it in fifteen. Can you be patient for me?”

“Caleb—it’s not a good idea. You know it’ll be a pain.”

He chuckles, brushing it off. Endless confidence. “Nothing’s a big enough pain to stop me when you’re involved,” he says. “Besides, the colonel gets some privileges.”

“And he’s going to use them to come see me after I have a nightmare?”

“What else would I use them for?” he asks—and he sounds so achingly sincere, like there’s nothing else he could think to do with his ability to bend the rules, to slightly abuse his power. “Fifteen minutes. I promise.”

He makes it in thirteen.

You meet him in the living room after you hear him let himself inside. He must still have the spare key you'd given him when you'd first reunited, before the questions started creeping in. When he pulls you to his chest, you follow automatically. A big hand cradles your head, fingers curling into your hair. His arms are so firm around you, just like they always used to be—he has a solidity to him that can’t be denied, a strength he carries in every line of his body. He’s in his uniform, strangely enough. 

You wrap your arms around him, fingers tugging at the starched material of his long coat. You want to bunch it up in your hands, stretch it out, leave an undeniable mark that he came here, tonight, to comfort you, just like he would have when he was at school and you still lived with your grandmother. He even smells the same—like worn leather and mineral oil from maintaining his plane’s engines and sharp, clean aftershave.

He rests the side of his face against the crown of your head, breathes in deep. You wonder if you smell the same too, just how he remembers. You wonder if you can both pretend that nothing has changed, if you could let him back into your life and forgive the time he spent away from you and overlook his lies and everything else he’s done to you since returning that hasn’t sat right. His fingers tug at the newly short strands of your hair—the only thing that truly ruins the mirage of your perfect, happy life with Caleb. 

Things have changed. They always will. You pull away from him.

He still keeps you in his arms, giving you distance but only so much. He gets more reluctant to allow space the further you pull away. “Thanks for hanging in there for me,” he says.

You nod because you don’t want to acknowledge out loud that you’ve done anything for him. It doesn’t matter whether he showed up or not. You would still be here, awake, thinking about things you wish you could forget. Your hand fists the material of his coat, tugging its starched lines into a wrinkled mess. “I hate that you’re wearing this.”

Without a word, he steps back from you, takes his coat off and throws it across the back of your couch. The metal armband, the badges and chains of rank, the embroidered sigil of the Fleet—all cast aside to reveal the man underneath. Caleb, in a dress shirt and slacks and tall boots. Caleb as he could have been if he’d stayed with the DAA, coming home to you after a long day at his normal job that he loved so passionately.

Not that he’d be coming home to you. It’s an odd way for your brain to put it. But the thought sticks there, push-pinned to the way you currently feel about him. Warm at his insistence on being there for you. Relieved that he’s alive, as if after the last time you saw him the universe would fess up to its tricks, reveal that it was all one long hallucination, and the Caleb you knew is still buried in the graveyard where you left him. The pieces of him that they were able to find.

Parts of him are still there. Buried, even now. Sometimes you don’t recognize the man in front of you. 

He lifts a hand to your face and you lean into his touch—it’s instinctual. Something you’ve done a million times. He takes this as permission to get closer to you again, to wrap you up in his arms, and this time you give in completely. This time it’s just your Caleb, the Caleb you love so dearly, protecting you from your bad dreams. 

“Let’s sit you down on the couch and I’ll make you some tea,” he says, a gloved hand cradling the back of your head. “That sound okay?”

You hate the layers keeping him away from you. You pull away from him, take his hand in yours and peel his glove off. Make him give you his other hand, do the same to that one. Then you just hold them, your palms against the backs of his hands, his fingers slightly outstretched, as if allowing you to scrutinize fully. He still has calluses from lifting weights, from handling guns so frequently. You curl his fingers and look at his nails, all uniformly cut, cuticles slightly overgrown but healthy. The same scars from growing up with him: a puckered circle on the knuckle of his right thumb from a nasty fall on the basketball court, a long line down his left ring finger from knocking the absolute daylights out of a kid that tore out a chunk of your hair on the playground.

It had been your stake on him. The finger where most people wore jewelry to state that they belonged to someone else. You had done him one better, despite the fact that his actions were his own. A scar instead of a ring. A claim that couldn’t be taken off and hidden in a drawer somewhere.

“I want to be in the kitchen with you,” you tell him. If you say it quietly, you think he maybe won’t hear the slight panic at the idea of being apart from him right now. 

He smiles, the expression quieter than usual but just as effusive. “We can make that happen,” he says, and before you can stop him, he loops an arm beneath your thighs and lifts you, makes you wrap your arms around his neck in surprise. He must have used his Evol to make it so easy, but you didn’t even sense it. “My tea service comes with complimentary delivery. And if I’m not delivering the tea to you, I guess I’ll have to deliver you to the kitchen.”

You let him carry you. Play with the ends of his hair, where it’s slightly longer in the back. He places you on the kitchen counter next to the electric kettle and gets to work. He’s never been to your apartment before, but there are things he intuits easily. The fact that you’d still have an electric kettle, like you used to at Grandma’s. The fact that your tea is kept in the cupboard above the sink. He narrows his eyes, tentatively points to the cupboard next to the fridge before asking, “...mugs?” And he’s right, because that’s where they used to be at home, too.

Moving out was hard—another layer of familiarity stripped away, another safety blanket removed from the pile. You tried to keep things as close to normal for you as possible, as if you could turn this new, unfamiliar apartment into a simulacrum of the house in which you grew up.

None of it brought Caleb back, which is what you’d really wanted. But now here he is. Making tea for you again, like he used to when you were younger. Carrying you around like nothing’s changed.

When the tea is done, it’s nearly two in the morning. You know how military organizations work—know how early he’ll have to be back at it tomorrow morning. You’ve got it bad, too, but at least you’re home. He hands you the steaming cup—chamomile, because maybe it’ll help you fit a good night’s sleep into a couple hours —and finally allows himself to relax somewhat. Stands in front of you and takes off his tie, the metal ring that fits under his collar. Undoes the first two buttons of his shirt.

You look. The edge of his collar bones, the divot in between, the long line of his throat. Steam touches your face. There was a point where you stopped being able to look away from him like this. After that moment on the porch, your first vacation from the Hunter Academy. Caleb’s hands on your face. What’s going through your head, baby? You wish it hadn’t been a part of your nightmare. Even though he didn’t kiss you—made it clear that he didn’t think of you like that—you still look back on that memory fondly.

The closest you’ve ever gotten to what you want. 

Your skin feels hot. Your eyes dart upwards to his and he’s seen you looking. Something dances in his gaze—mirth, maybe, though it’s hard to tell with him. It could be something darker. You used to be able to read him like your favorite book, the words etched into your brain so deeply that you barely needed light to follow along the page. 

He gets closer and your breath shallows, stops. Puts his big hands against the countertop on either side of you, leans in gently. Still tall enough that he’s looking down at you. “Take a sip,” he tells you. “I wanna know if it needs anything else.”

You’re sure it’s perfect. He’s made your tea for decades now, knows how picky you are about brewing time and sugar ratio. You do what he asks regardless, bitter and sweet crossing paths on your tongue. There were nights like this where he would make you tea and you would drink it and cling to him after, not content to go to sleep unless it would be by his side. You’re so close to him that you can imagine yourself feeling the heat of his body, as if it’s unconsciously radiating outwards to comfort you. To wrap you up, keep you safe. You finish about half the cup before saying, “It’s good.”

“Sure you don’t want anything else?” he asks. When his voice gets quiet like this, it’s always a little more nasal, a little more hoarse. You used to find it endearing before you got older and started feeling something entirely different deep in your gut whenever he spoke this way. “The name of the tea service is misleading. I can do food, too. Massage, if your shoulders are stiff. Just tell me what you need and I’ll do it.”

What you need is for him to stay. Sleep next to you, like he used to when you were both kids. But maybe—more than that. When he talks to you like this, acts this way with you—it’s confusing. You swallow audibly, nervous, not willing to think about why you’re feeling so on edge this close to him, trapped on all sides. “Don’t you have work pretty early tomorrow?”

“Why?” he asks. “Do you need me to stay?”

Of course he knows. Just like he was your favorite book, you’ve always been his. He probably knew that you wanted him to stay from the second he got here—from the second he answered your call. But he wasn’t going to do anything about it until you asked. Giving you control, in a slight way, even though he already knew how this evening was going to pan out. 

“No,” you say. You both know you’re lying. But since he died, you’ve dealt with your nightmares all on your own. He wasn’t there to turn to. He left you to exist by yourself, to figure it all out without his hand there to take. “No,” you repeat, with more resolve this time, “but it was nice of you to come all this way.”

He looks—disappointed, maybe. His eyes narrow slightly, mouth pulling tight, but it’s such a small expression that it could be missed by someone that doesn’t watch him the way you do. He’s smiling again before you know it, easy and wide. Something about him seems farther away even though he’s still got his arms on either side of you, so close that you could reach out and put your entire palm on his chest. “You needed me,” he says. “Of course I was gonna come to you.”

You needed me . Had it been need? Or was it a want so bone-deep that the two feelings could easily be confused, switched out for one another? “Stay while I finish my tea.”

The laugh this receives is small, warm. Pleased at your command. He raises two fingers to his temple, flicks his wrist in a lazy mock-salute. “Yes, ma’am. Permission to move you to the couch so you can sit comfortably?” When he lowers his hand, it doesn’t return to the countertop. He spreads it across your thigh, graceful fingers splayed down the side, thumb lightly moving back and forth across the top. Skin to skin. You only really wear shorts and large shirts to sleep—his shirts. You hadn't even thought about it. It's just something you started doing after he died, after all of his surviving belongings from the DAA were parceled up and sent to you. His hand is so big that you feel a little breathless looking at it against your leg, swallowing up space so effortlessly. 

There’s no way he doesn’t feel this too. You know that. You know it more now than you did at nineteen, with his gentle hands holding your face. There’s something there, undeniable, that sits between the two of you. You love him. Of that much, you’re sure. But you don’t know what it means coupled with the heat you feel underneath your skin every time he touches you, with the heaviness of his gaze when he looks at you this close.

He could want everything from you. He could want nothing. You really wouldn’t know. He’s always kept his cards too close to the chest, even when you were begging him to show his hand.

“Permission granted, soldier.” You don’t do a very good job of hiding the way you’re feeling, but he doesn’t call you on it. Just smiles, smiles, smiles, quiet and smug and satisfied. 

The hand on your thigh loops beneath your legs, and he gives you a squeeze, as if to say: this is what the touch was for. There was a purpose to it. I knew you were going to let me carry you. Innocent, see? Just like everything else I do. Like the way he pulled away from you when you were nineteen, leaning into his touch. His Evol takes the mug from your hands, steadily allows your tea to follow the two of you to the couch. He floats it back over to you when you’re comfortable, the tendrils of his power slick against your hands.

It used to scare you when you were little. The feel of it—like oil floating in water, and your hands passing through it. But you got used to it after a while. It was comforting, gentle. His Evol, in its iridescence and its softness, was something you considered beautiful. Something you still consider beautiful. You would never tell him this because it’s maybe the oddest thing you can think about an innate, intangible power.

“Sit,” you tell him. Pat the couch next to you. He does as you ask and you melt into his side, comforted by his familiar scent, his gentle warmth. His dress shirt is scratchy beneath your cheek. You wish it wasn’t there, that your face could lie against his chest skin-to-skin, that you could feel his heartbeat solidly in the place where you’re connected to him.

His arm curls behind you, hand smoothing down your hair. With his long, graceful fingers, he traces your hairline, the curve of your ear, the line of your neck. Then his touch trails back up the way it came. Again and again, until you could imagine that there was nothing more to existence than this. “Sure you don’t want me to stay?”

“You work early.”

“Doesn’t matter,” he says. Presses his lips to the crown of your head, breathes in deeply. His voice is serious, but the serious you like—where he wants to express that he cares. Needs you to know that even though he teases about a lot of things, he doesn’t tease about this. “If you don’t mind me leaving early, I’m all yours.”

It’s selfish, you know. But Caleb has always seemed to encourage that. Has always seemed to want you to be selfish with his time, with the things he can give you. “You can’t take up the whole bed,” you say. A decision. An easier thing to say than yes, stay here, and since you’ll be here, please hold me while I sleep .

“I’ll shrink myself down,” he tells you. You can feel him smile against your hair—or maybe you’re imagining the feeling, but regardless, you know it to be true. He always smiled when you asked him to sleep next to you. Grinned wide before telling you that there’s nothing he’d like more.

You love the feel of him next to you in bed. Taking up so much space, his power evident in the size of his body, the packed muscle of it. “I want you pocket-sized.”

“What if you crush me in your sleep?”

“Too bad,” you say. “Shouldn’t have been so big in the first place. Then we wouldn’t have to shrink you.”

“Don’t lie to me,” he teases. “You like it.”

Your skin feels hot, clammy. Somehow both. You don’t like how easily he said that, and how easily he’s letting it sit in the silence between you. “No I don’t,” you say, because contesting everything he says is an instinct, something that resides in your bones.

Easily, he plucks you from your seat, Evol carrying your tea to the coffee table. Situates you on the couch between his legs, facing away from him. Allowing you, at least, the mercy to not have to look at him right now. He wraps his arms around you, pulls you back against his powerful chest. His arms are so long that he can loop the width of you with just one. Your head slips easily under his chin, and you’re so contained—so protected by him that you feel like you could suffocate. One hand comes up to cup your face—the one you haven’t claimed with your ring-finger scar. It’s colder than the rest of him, even though you keep your apartment at a pretty reasonable temperature. Or maybe it’s your face, burning, too hot against his unflustered touch.

“I said don’t lie. You like that I can hold you like this,” he says. Brushes his thumb over the skin right below your bottom lip. “Am I right?”

When you were younger, he’d wrap you up in his arms like this when you were having a panic attack. Held you so close that it felt like you were a part of him. No longer an external body—his veins connected to yours, your hearts beating in tandem. You loved it. Sometimes you asked him to do this when you weren’t even having a panic attack—you just wanted him so close that it felt like your edges were blending together. You stay quiet, because there’s no way you can tell him this. No way you’d want to.

“You don’t have to say it.” He holds you for a few more moments, arms firm yet gentle. The way he breathes out makes it sounds like he’s relieved, like there was something weighing on him that he couldn’t let go of until he had you in his hold. “I couldn’t do this if I was pocket-sized, though. So maybe we skip the shrinking for tonight?”

“Fine,” you say. “Take me to bed?” The way you say this—is it on purpose or not? You couldn’t tell him if he asked. You won’t even let yourself know. It has an effect, though. 

His arms tighten around you slightly, a little too firm to be classified as gentle anymore. His breathing goes from relieved to something heavier. “How could I say no to that?”

You wonder if he sees it too. The weight beneath the words. No, that’s not right—it’s not a case of whether he sees it, because it’s impossible to ignore. You’re not nineteen anymore, and he’s not twenty-two. 

The weight is there. The feelings are there. And you’re terribly sure that there will come a point, sooner than later, where you’ll both have to decide what those feelings are.

˚✧ ﾟ.

It’s not until you’re sleeping that he allows himself to really let his mind wander. He tries to be good—really, he does, but you make it difficult. He just loves you so deeply that some days he can’t breathe, the feeling taking up so much space in his body that there’s no room for air. 

So many things are endearing about you. Your first instinct after a nightmare being to call him. His clothes all neatly folded in their own drawers in your closet, like you’ve been keeping a space for him to come back to all this time. The way you wanted him to stay so badly that he could hear it in every word you said, even when you were telling him to go home. 

Sometimes you say things that make him so hard he can’t see straight. He could take you to bed, just like you asked—he could lie you out and worship you, he could show you just how much he loves you with actions instead of words. 

He thinks about the way you taste so often that he could be jailed for it. Would you like that—his head between your thighs, praising you? For him to be gentle, loving, to ready you with his tongue before he does something even worse? He imagines you saying his name while he’s inside of you and he has to pull away from you a little, hold his jaw tightly with his mechanical hand. 

A little pressure, a little punishment. (You’re disgusting. You’re disgusting.) There’s a nonzero chance he could finish untouched just from thinking about you like this. He feels so guilty when he gets this way, especially when you’re in such close proximity, basically still in his arms. It’s a betrayal of trust. 

If you woke up and he was fully awake, ridiculously hard in nothing but a pair of sweats—how would he even justify that to you? He could make you feel so good, though. He could learn your body so quickly, figure you out like he always does—but he doesn’t know if you would want that. And the guilt, the idea of you trusting him to be a good man, and him beside you, thinking about the things he would do for you if you’d just let him—

More important than anything physical is the fact that he doesn’t want you in that way only. If he were to finally have you, he’d need to have all of you. A taste isn’t enough. He wants you to be his and happy about it. He wants to be the only guy you text and the only person you come home to and the only man to whom you ever say I love you . 

Your brow furrows in your sleep, delicate. He moves his hand from his face to yours. Cold metal and grafted skin. Another part of him, gone. This and all the gaps in his head. He doesn’t feel like the Caleb that was yours anymore and it scares him because that’s all he wants to be. 

Despite the fact that he can’t feel your skin against his palm, despite the inorganic nature of what he’s becoming, his touch seems to quiet you. Your face evens out into an expression that’s so serene that it manages to calm him, too. He could kiss you like this and you wouldn’t even know.

He won’t. He won’t. He’s not a good man. He [                                                                          ]. [                                                                                                                  ]. But he won’t.

Those are the bad thoughts that he can’t control, the ones that sometimes leap out of nowhere. He doesn’t know if he had them before, but even if he did, they were never this bad. Never this [                                                                                                 ], intent on breaking your trust so he can take something he wants. 

What he really wants is you safe, always. Even from him.

He settles for cradling your head with his hand, pulling you closer so he can kiss your hairline, smell the shampoo you use, feel the texture of your hair against his lips. It’s enough. So much more than enough when he’s almost positive that he’ll never be able to have what he actually wants.

He’s not unaware of your feelings. He sees the way you look at him, sometimes. Notices the way you react to his touch, his words when he speaks to you in certain tones. But if he tried something and found out you only wanted him physically, he thinks that he would die. 

You breathe out deep, melt further into his embrace. He would die for sure. He can’t live without you. He can’t do this without you. He thinks of what he has to do for Ever, the [                                                                                        ] and the people he’s killed and the [                                                             ]. Guilt is something he knows the way he knows his favorite gun. Muzzle to his temple, finger on the trigger. He would die. You wouldn’t forgive him if you knew some of the things he’s done since leaving you. You’re barely forgiving him now. 

It’s all for you. He just wants you to live. 

There are tears on his face again. His head aches so painfully, so deeply that it feels like he’ll never know a reality where it doesn’t. His breathing is too shallow, and his hand is maybe a little too tight on your hair, and he can’t [                                                          ] he can’t, he can’t, it’s [                                                                                                                          ] and he hates it, he hates [                                                                                   ], [                                                                                          ]—

“Caleb?” you ask, groggy, and he fucked up. (Don’t swear in front of her. Be a good example.) Thought too much. Burnt up too much of his brain. Woke you up when you need rest, when all he wants to do is provide you with what you need and he failed even at that. “Hey—oh my god, Caleb —what’s wrong?”

Your hands are on his face and you’ve felt the tears. It’s dark in your room. The lighting outside isn’t great—something he’s noticed while taking care of you, something he doesn’t like about your apartment. He doesn’t have the breath in his lungs to tell you he wasn’t crying, that there’s nothing to worry about. (She’s gonna think you’re weak.) He hates that you’re seeing him like this.

“Look at me. Hey, please—please look at me.” You’re sitting up now, both hands on his face urging him to look at you, and he can’t.

He can’t. You shouldn’t see him like this. His head hurts so much and you shouldn’t know that he gets like this. Because he’s here to comfort you , to protect you , and now you’re worried over him , and what if you don’t call him next time? “I’m okay,” he says, and the pain is still splitting him apart. His vision is blurred at the edges.

“You’re not,” you say, voice gone a little hard. “Caleb—this is an order. Look at me.”

There’s not a chance he can ever disoblige when you order him to do something. When you tell him plainly: I’m commanding you, and you’re in a position where you’re supposed to listen. It’s addicting, hearing that solid edge to your voice. It’s irresistible. 

You’re worried. He has worried you. His vision feels a little more solid when he looks at you, his breathing suddenly evening out. His brain still pounds against his skull, but he can bear it. You’re so gorgeous when you’re worried about him. All the time, in fact. He’s never seen anyone prettier—doesn’t believe it’s possible.

His hands go to your wrists. They’re so small in his grasp. He can wrap a hand around one and still have room in his grip to spare. Taking a deep breath is easier in your hold. It makes him feel infinitely more grounded. “I’m fine. This looks way worse than it is.”

“What happened?”

He debates telling you. Debates it heavily. Before, he didn’t because it was for your protection. Close to the Farspace Fleet, close to Ever. If they got their hands on you, found out you knew too much about the chip in his head, wiping out pieces of him in a steady stream—he doesn’t want to know what they’d do to you. (Remember what they did to her when you were younger? When you didn’t protect her?) “Bad dream,” he lies. Tries to laugh it off, despite the way light pulses in his vision along to the beat of the drums in his head. “What are the chances, huh?”

You’re primed not to believe him, and he can’t blame you for that. There’s so much he’s keeping from you. He was dead for months before he was able to come back to you. Of course your first instinct would be to not trust him.

But it’s a palatable excuse, something that makes sense in context. It’s not like he doesn’t get bad dreams. He rarely sleeps anymore without something terrible projecting itself in his mind—and alongside it, you: the way you looked at him right before he walked back into the house, before the explosion cracked his body open like one of the pomegranates he used to buy you every year in early autumn. You loved the taste, hated the way the seeds got stuck in your teeth.

“Do you wanna talk about it?” you ask. Your hands go from his face to the sides of his neck, fingers curling into the hair at his nape. A reassuring caress. He’s going to think about this touch for weeks— months to come, and you have no idea.

In another life, you could be his, and this could be you about to kiss him. In another life, you both could have avoided the trauma of your childhoods. In another life, he could simply be yours in any way you would have him, and it would be so much more than enough.

“No,” he says, but kindly. You understand. The dreams sometimes feel more real if they’re spoken aloud. He pulls you back to him so you’re once again in his arms—and this is the most unbelievable part of his lie. Because how could he ever sleep poorly with you beside him like this? “You need your rest. And I’ll be okay. Just gotta hold you tighter.”

You don’t respond—instead snake your arms around him, hold him close against you. (Closer. Please get closer.) As if wordlessly promising that you won’t let it happen again. That you’ll protect him from his bad dreams.

He’s the one that’s supposed to protect you. You should never have to worry about him like this. But it’s late, and he’s tired and his head hurts, and you’re so warm against him.

“Love you,” you tell him, and he knows in what way you mean it.

“I love you, too.” The way he says it to you is different, because it always has been.

˚✧ ﾟ.

Your hands are shaking the entire train ride to Skyhaven. The past hour: Caleb returning home after a reunion lunch with Gideon, his roommate and co-pilot at the DAA; the Wanderer attack on the Coelum Express that almost ripped the entire train apart; calling Caleb ten times back-to-back and only getting voicemail.

There were no casualties. That’s what the news report said. But he wasn’t picking up his phone, so he must have been injured, and that’s what made you call Gideon. All you really took from that phone call was badly hurt, wouldn’t go to the hospital. You were on the next train to Skyhaven without thinking.

You have to pay for a private passenger plane to take you to Caleb’s home, and everything is taking too long. It’s been nearly an hour since you and Gideon talked on the phone. By the time you make it to his house, you can’t sit still—you’re vibrating out of your skin, you’ve texted Caleb more times than seems sane.

His home is empty when you let yourself in. Quiet. You immediately switch to investigative mode—your hand drifting towards your holstered gun as if you’re going to find a threat in his home that he’s been hiding in closets, in the wedges of darkness behind open doors. Maybe it’s not a Wanderer lurking within his home, but he’s definitely been hiding something from you—in his living room, one panel of his wall is slightly ajar, and from your vantage point, you can see a room inside. The soft glow of machines, the sound of pained breaths.

What you find makes you feel sick. 

Caleb, sitting on a table in the middle of the room, his arm—a mechanical limb, metal and bunched wires and deep red lights—plugged into the machines you could see from his living room. It can’t be right. You saw him today. You touched his skin today, pinched the meat of his palm hard between your fingers. Real and rough and a little clammy. Nervous from you being so close, you had thought. Hoped, more like.

“What’re you doing here, pip?” he asks—not even turning to look at you, not even offering you an expression asking for forgiveness—and he has the gall to sound bashful. Oh, this? Just my prosthetic arm. Don’t look, it’s not proper. 

You’re going to kill him. You’re going to kill him.

You’re so angry you can’t speak. Your hands are balled into uncomfortable fists at your side, and you stalk across the room, your body moving faster than your head can keep up with. Your face is hot, everything bubbling up inside you, feelings rolling into a boil. When you’re standing in front of him, you get a good, full look at what has replaced the arm he used to carry you with, that even today he used to pull you into a hug. Fingers that tugged at the ends of your hair, still obsessed with its new length. His skin had felt so real. “What is this?”

He laughs, a little self-deprecating. “Not my best look.”

“Your best look?” You’re going to kill him. You’re going to strangle him with his own fucking arm. “You’re worried about optics right now? About whether you’re—” You have to cut yourself off, have to put a fist in front of your mouth in case you need to bite something. “I can’t believe you.”

“I wanted to tell you,” he says. Which means he knows he should have, knows that you wouldn’t appreciate something like this being kept from you. But he did it anyway.

You’re so tired. So tired of being angry at him. So tired of finding out something else and having everything you’ve built between you since his death crumble. How many times are you going to have to restart with him? Fatigue fills you like lead, your body heavy, your legs so exhausted that standing feels like effort. Your face is hot, your eyes welling with tears—and you hate that it’s not even because you’re still grieving. It’s not because you’re sad. You’re tired . You’re so tired you want to cry.

He panics when he sees tears, like he always used to. He unplugs his arm from the machines, reaches towards you. You can hear the metal joints clink against each other when he moves. “I’m sorry. Oh, baby, I’m sorry. Come over here—please?”

It’s hard to resist him when he calls you that. A weakness planted within you when you almost got everything you had ever wanted at nineteen. You let him wrap you up in his arms, the metal cold even through your clothes. So at odds with his overly-hot skin. He’s always run warm. You loved sitting on the porch with him in late summer, watching the leaves turn, listening to the cicada-buzz that would soon quiet once it got too cold. That’s what you think about when you think of warmth—his arms around you, holding you just the way you liked, and the way you felt close but never felt that it was close enough. 

“I’m not crying because of you,” you tell him.

He’s quiet for a second. “It’s okay if you are.”

“I’ve cried over you enough. This is just—I’m tired.” And maybe it’s the exhaustion that allows you to relax into him. To take the comfort he offers you so freely. Nothing you’ve felt since his return has been small. Everything has been so large: relief, anger, fear. Too big to process quickly. Your body is tired from trying to keep up. Your mind has been tired since he closed the door behind him and left you outside your childhood home. “Tell me why you kept this from me,” you say. “At least that.”

He’s quiet. Keeps holding you, his large hand cradling the back of your head. “It’s complicated.”

A strangled, frustrated noise comes from your chest. “I don’t care if it’s complicated.”

“It’s dangerous for you to know too much.”

You try to pull back but he doesn’t let you. You know you could turn this conversation your way if you could just look him in the eyes. When you were little and Caleb said no to you, all it took were some strategically placed pouts and extended eye contact to get him to break. 

Unfortunately, he knows your tactics just as well as you. He’s not going to let you have the upper hand without a fight. 

“You can’t keep telling me it’s dangerous without telling me who I’m in danger from,” you say. Maybe appealing to logic will work. “Is it the Fleet? Is it the DAA? At least let me know who my enemy is so I can protect myself.”

“I’m protecting you,” he says, “so you don’t have to worry yourself about all that. No one’s gonna put a hand on you unless they want to lose it.”

The words make you shiver. There’s a warmth you feel at his insistence on protecting you—but also something a little more hair-raising. The sensation of being one step removed from control, like you’re in the cockpit but don’t have a say in where the plane is taking you. 

When you pull away this time, he lets you. Because he thinks you’ve accepted his protection, thinks that you’re done asking questions. You’ll stay away from the big ones for now. You can catch him at a time when he’s less emotionally guarded. Less prone to defend because he’s been caught in a vulnerable position. You reach out to his new arm—pause, checking his reaction, waiting for him to stop you. 

He doesn’t. It seems like he wants you to touch. Wants you to reconcile that this is a part of him now that he can’t remove. 

The metal is cold, even as there’s a slight buzz when your fingertips ghost across exposed wiring. The touch is a caress. You can’t help it—even with the unfamiliarity of the metal, the shock that came with seeing it, you can never touch him with anything other than love. This is a part of him. “Can you feel this?”

“No,” he says, and he sounds devastated at that fact. He captures your fingers with his metal hand—cold and constricting. Nothing like the touch of the boy you knew in childhood. “I can feel pressure because it’s necessary. I can feel pain.”

Metal fingers the color of tungsten bullets. Darker than regular steel. Better for large artillery weapons because it can shred other metals easily. “...is that necessary, too?”

He doesn’t answer. Instead, moves your hand over his heart, presses your palm to his chest. The way he closes his eyes and breathes out when he can finally feel your touch again—you couldn’t call it anything other than relieved. “Couldn’t wait ‘til tomorrow to see me?” he asks, teasing. Deflecting. “Missed me that bad?”

“Caleb,” you say. Will calling him on his hollow defense make anything better? Will it make him tell you anything you actually want to know? It would have, before. He would have crumbled in an instant, told you everything.

Or maybe that’s what he tricked you into thinking when you were younger. Part of you has come to believe that he’s always kept secrets from you. That he’s always been very good at convincing you that he tells you everything.

Instead of asking what you want to know, you say, “Your arm was… normal earlier.”

He nods. “Go wait for me in the living room. I’ll show you. And then we can go to bed, okay?”

If it’ll give you any sort of answers, you’ll easily do what he asks. You only sit for a few minutes before he comes out and joins you, still shirtless but different—his arm as it was when he came to Linkon to see you. Flesh and blood, by all appearances.

He joins you on the couch and your reaction is instant, your hands wrapping around his forearm, pulling him closer to you. The cold—you still feel it, but it’s muted by the skin. Everything feels so real, so soft beneath your fingers. His arm still has a fine layer of dark hair that it always did. You turn his hand in yours, palm up, and trace the vein that runs from his wrist to the crook of his elbow. You can feel the ridge of it, the slight warmth—but not his pulse, you realize. 

You drop his hand, pull away. The difference makes you feel lightheaded. 

“It’s a skin graft,” he tells you. “They grew it from my cells.”

“So you have to… put it on?”

He grimaces at that. “Yeah, it’s not pretty. But don’t worry. Not gonna make you see that.”

You can’t help yourself—after your brief dizziness subsides, you take his arm between your hands again, turn it over for inspection. He still has a scar on the knuckle of his thumb. A bad fall on the asphalt of your neighborhood park’s basketball court. You remember him coming home bleeding, promising you he was alright even as he looked close to tears. He must have been twelve, maybe thirteen. You smooth your thumb over the scar just to feel its smoothness, the way you used to when you were younger. “How do you still have this?”

He shrugs, then must notice how much this response seems to frighten you—the idea of someone creating this elaborate sleeve of skin for him and somehow knowing his scars as intimately as he did. As you did. “I asked for it,” he tells you. “I wanted everything to be… right.”

“Right how?”

“I liked the way it was before,” he says. Shrugs too nonchalantly, enough that you know he’s lying. One of his bad tells. “Call it vanity.”

There is a stone in your throat. “Did you want it to be identical because you wanted to keep it a secret from me?”

He shakes his head emphatically. The way he used to when you were younger and you asked him the important questions. Do you think my bad dreams could come true? Could I die in my sleep if I get too anxious? Are you ever going to leave me? 

He lied about the last one. He could be lying about this. 

Thoughts can never be your own when you’re with Caleb. He knows you too well. Can see it clear that you don’t believe him. “No. I was always gonna tell you. I wouldn’t have—no.” 

His large hands curl around your upper arms—an embrace from afar. Not pushing his luck. He considers his words, a pained expression on his face. How much should he reveal? That’s always the framework for how he answers you now and you hate it. You want him to tell you everything because he wants to. Because he can. 

“I didn’t want you to see me differently,” he finally says.

“I wouldn’t,” you say. You can’t stop yourself. You can’t even truly parse that he thinks your opinion of him would change over something so far out of his control. “I don’t.”

He laughs at that, but it’s hollow. You both know why. Of course you see him differently now. Not because of the arm—but everything else. It’s impossible not to. His hands tighten on your arms just a little, and you wonder how careful he has to be with his prosthesis. Whether its power matches his natural strength, or if its capabilities go far beyond. 

“I would’ve known, anyway,” you say. Touching him feels paramount to everything else. Your fingers have to keep running up the expanse of lab-grown skin to find all its incongruencies with the Caleb you once knew. 

“Yeah?” he asks. Keeps his eyes on your fingers and their hesitant touch. A trick of sound, maybe: his breath coming shallow and shaky. 

The skin of his shoulder is smooth under your hand. There’s no seam—no obvious place where the grafted skin meets the natural—but the curve just above his underarm is soft in a way it hasn’t been since early childhood. “Your stretch marks are gone,” you say, and you sound like you miss them because you do. Because you liked the evidence of him growing up beside you, of his skin struggling to keep up during his initial growth spurt, and then later, after high school, when he started putting on muscle at the DAA at a rate that seemed too fast for you to comprehend. One winter vacation, he came home and he was suddenly big. Shoulders wide in a way you wouldn’t have associated with Caleb before then.

“Didn’t realize you were paying such close attention,” he says. Takes your hand in his once again, moves it from inorganic to organic. The stretch marks on his other shoulder, jagged white lines that spear up to the curve of his arm from the very top of his bicep. Proof that he’s real. “I still have these ones.”

There’s a long moment where you just allow yourself to touch him. Where his hands around your arms go slack, feeling you instead of holding you. The both of you sitting together, mesmerized by skin touching skin, by details that prove you’re still here. Still the person you’ve always been. 

Your hands go to his face like instinct—because you need to see him. You need to look him in the eye. And he lets you hold his face, nuzzles into your touch, closes his eyes and breathes out heavy and slow, a sound that screams relief. Comfort. He takes one hand in his, skin warm and real against yours, and burrows deeper. Like he can live in your hold, a ship come to dock. He looks up at you from beneath his thick lashes, sunset eyes gazing at you fondly. 

It’s like the moment between the two of you on the porch in reverse. Caleb’s face in your hands. His eyes dropping to your lips like he can’t help it. And that same feeling—a deep longing, something you didn’t understand at nineteen but that you can define now. You love him in a different way than you loved him growing up. 

Your breaths come shaky, just like his. Standing at this precipice is frightening but familiar. Comforting the way only a freefall can be: regardless of what happens along the way, you’re going to hit the ground. 

But not now. Maybe you’re a coward for pulling away, for creating a little more space. Maybe it’s self-preservation. Maybe one of those things is innate to the other, and whatever category you fall into has a piece of both.

He understands, like always—now is the time to diffuse the tension. Now is the time for things to go back to normal. He allows your hands to slip from his face—but does do one thing differently. He holds your palm to his cheek for a moment longer than normal, and before he lets it go, his lips ghost across your palm. A small kiss. A token of something like affection. 

Your hands are shaking when you get them back. Balling them into fists in your lap makes this easier to ignore.

“Why’d you come visit, pip?” he asks. Pulls at the ends of your hair, annoying, with a little grin on his face. The spitting image of the boy you grew up with, now a man with secrets. “Not that I’m complaining.”

“I heard about what happened on the Coelum. There were injuries, and you weren’t picking up your phone…”

“I’m sorry,” he says, genuine. Like always. Even if he lies to you, no matter how bad things get, you’re somehow positive that he would never apologize to you if he didn’t mean it. “I should’ve sent a text, but I didn’t think you’d hear about it ‘til tomorrow.”

“It was on the news. But I probably wouldn’t have known for sure it was your train that was attacked if I didn’t call Gideon.”

He doesn’t respond immediately. Sometimes you forget that Caleb is a trained weapon, that his body looks the way it does for more than just his own aesthetic reasons. The way he tenses puts you on edge, similar to how you feel when someone holding a gun turns the safety off—but you know he wouldn’t hurt you. You’re just surprised that his reaction is this. He clears his throat, like that’ll displace any of the strained emotion you can hear in his voice when he speaks. “You have his number? I didn’t realize you two were that close.”

“We’re not,” you say, shrugging. “We—after you… died, we—he was at the funeral.”

“After I died, you… what?” This is the kind of cold you hear when Caleb is being the Colonel. Not the kind of cold he is with you. Well—the kind he never was with you. He’s always been the warmest person you know. A ray of sunshine, an endearing dork with a handsome face, the life of whatever party he was invited to. 

It scares you when he’s like this. Whatever might have physically changed about him—his new arm, the replicated scars and the ones left only in memory—if it was to placate you, it would never work. Not when he’s capable of being like this. Talking to you with this tone of voice, the way he never used to.

“We talked a little,” you say. “It was hard to deal with alone.”

He rubs at his temple with his inorganic hand—the pressure turns his skin white, leaves a small red mark behind on his forehead after. He swallows, seems to calm himself. “I’m glad you had someone that understood,” he says, and his voice is almost back to normal. Like he’s forcing himself to get there but not quite reaching. “Gideon’s a really great guy. And he’s always known how important you are to me.”

“He told me the way you used to talk about me at school.” There were so many things you’d never known. That Caleb kissed the tag of the necklace you’d given him before every flight, that he kept a framed picture of you on his desk and a polaroid of you in his wallet, that it got to a point where he would talk about you so much at parties that it would scare girls off for the other guys, that they started begging him to stay at the dorms or shut up about you just for one night. “It helped.”

“I’m glad he didn’t forget about me when you guys were talking.” He still sounds tense. Still sounds cold. 

And maybe this is too much of a presumption. But you know it’s not. Really, deep down, you know that even if Caleb doesn’t want you in the way you want him, he wants you in some capacity. He’s a man, despite everything. Quietly, you say, “Caleb. I didn’t sleep with him.”

He inhales sharp, quick. His jaw tightens. He looks cornered, so surprised and alarmed that you’ve breached this territory that neither of you are brave enough to cross into. Slowly, he unravels himself. Loosens his muscles, becomes more like a man than a weapon. “And you didn’t…?”

“We didn’t do anything. He was just looking out for me because you weren’t there to do it yourself.”

Slowly, he nods. More to himself than you. Leans back against the couch and presses his thumb and index finger against his eyes, like he’s trying to block out everything. Or keep everything in. “I don’t know what we’re…” He shakes his head. Bites his lip. Then says your name, quiet and heavy.

You can’t do this right now. You can’t confront your feelings. Can’t confront his feelings. Because when it’s finally, plainly revealed to you that Caleb doesn’t love you in the way you love him, you think something within you will dull forever. “We should go to bed.”

When he looks at you—you know what it looks like when Caleb is in pain. You’ve seen it enough in your lifetime. But never pain as deep as this. He says your name again. More insistent.

“Will you sleep with me tonight?”

This stops him, like you knew it would. He can never deny the opportunity to be close to you. To hold you in his arms when you sleep. And it’s more than a bribe to get him to stop moving things into territory you’re not sure you can handle right now. 

You want him close. You want to hold him and know all the parts of him that are holding you. You want to run your fingers over the smooth skin where his stretch marks are supposed to be and allow yourself to come to terms with it.

But you can’t say that out loud. Instead, you gaze up at him—give him that look that always wins arguments. That gets you whatever you want when it comes to him.

You know you’ve won when he sighs and rolls his eyes, unable to stop the corners of his lips from turning up. Maybe he likes it when you ask him for things, or maybe he’s just happy at the prospect of sleeping beside you. It’s something you can’t ask him to tell you. Instead, you follow him to his bedroom and allow yourself to dream of the many things you can’t ask for. The things you’re afraid he’d tell you and the things you’re afraid he wouldn’t.

part two!!

[bkgexe]

decode—

geto suguru x f!reader wc: 6.4k+ tags: sci-fi au—tbh i leaned into the cyberpunk futurism thing again i can't help myself 💀, suguru's job is never explicitly mentioned but hopefully you get the gist, he's also a bit scary but i think that's normal ?? idk hehe thank you thank you thank you to dear @rabbbitseason for allowing me to write this ! it's my first time with him 🥹 i hope it's okay ! very grateful for all your support 🥹

ONE

On the night you meet Suguru, an outage swallows the bar in one gulp.

No flicker, just a snap and everything cuts. The holosign outside dies in a whine of static, fans grind to a halt, light collapses, and you're left standing in the dark, holding a tray of warm glasses in hands that suddenly feel too small.

It's disappointing, but nothing new. You’re used to this. Your part of town doesn’t scream when the power goes out—it just sighs.

There’s a rustle near the door. Not the scrambling kind, not like the usual patrons stumbling out to smoke and curse the grid; it’s measured, heavy boots on concrete, too slow to be familiar.

This part of town isn't kind, even to someone it's grown. You step behind the counter in preparation for something—anything.

The figure comes into view in pieces—at first, just a tall silhouette framed by the dim spill of emergency glow leaking in from the street, but then he steps closer, and you see him: all in black, lean and broad-shouldered, his coat trailing like a shadow that's grown too long. The emergency light catches in his eyes, plum; dark and sharp and sweet.

You try not to stare. He probably notices anyway.

"Power out everywhere, or just here?" His voice is low, silk wrapped around steel. Calm in the way that makes you wary.

You shrug, but aren't sure he sees it. "Whole block, I think."

He hums, like that tells him something, and you reach below the counter to fumble for the old lantern. It flickers to life, casting amber light across the counter and his face. He’s handsome—suddenly so—but there’s something else. Something in the way he stands, relaxed but alert, like a man used to being watched.

You clear your throat. "Can still serve you something, if you're not picky. Got a few bottles that don't need cooling."

He smiles, slow and deliberate. One strand of his long black hair has come loose from the tight bun at the back of his head, and it swings slightly as he leans closer.

"Something warm, then," he says, not looking at the bottles. He’s looking at you.

You nod and turn, shoulders rising as you reach for the chipped ceramic pot. The movement’s an excuse to hide, give you a moment to settle the uneven flutter in your chest. You’re not used to being looked at like that. Not with focus. Not with intention.

The power’s out, but the pot’s still warm from before the lights went. You kept it wrapped in a thermal sleeve—old habit from long nights, colder ones. You pour the tea slow, steady, hoping your hands don’t shake as much as they feel they might. The silence thickens around you, too many shadows in too little space.

When he speaks again, his voice is low and steady, curling around edges in the dark. “City’s quieter with the lights out.”

You don’t answer right away, letting the sound of tea against ceramic fill the gap. Letting the heat of the cup chase back the chill climbing your fingers. “It’s always loud,” you say finally. “Just changes the kind.”

He makes a soft sound—agreement, maybe. Or understanding. Or neither. “No neon, no noise,” he says, more to the air than to you. “Funny how much the city depends on its own distractions.”

You slide the cup across the bar. He doesn’t reach for it right away, just watches the steam coil upward, like he’s waiting for something to reveal itself.

“I like it better this way, feels…cleaner, I guess.” You say, and it's true; this part of town isn't kind, no, but without the automated glitz and glamour, there's no need to pretend.

You hear the soft shift of fabric as he leans in—not close enough to touch, but closer than before. His presence hums against the edges of your awareness.

“You’re not scared of the dark?” he asks, voice smooth, teasing. His smile is wide, charming, disarms you in a way that it shouldn't.

You hesitate, trying to bite back your growing timidness. “Only when it’s creepy,” you say, "when it creaks or breathes back at me.”

That makes him huff, amused. Not quite a laugh, but close enough. “So, no ghosts in here?”

“Well, yeah, we have those,” you shrug, “They just mind their business.”

That pulls something out of him, something real and small that feels like a reward. “Interesting bar,” he continues, finally reaching for the tea. “Do you see much traffic here?”

You keep your face still. “Some.”

“Travelers?”

You nod, wary of where this is going, though nothing in his tone gives anything away. Not pushy, not prying. Just drifting. “People passing through,” you say. “They come. They leave. Same as anywhere.”

He sips. There’s something practiced in the way he does it. Measured, like he’s used to watching, used to waiting. “This part of the district,” he says after a beat, “doesn’t get much patrol. No official presence. Doesn’t that bother you?”

You shrug. “They never helped much anyway.”

Another pause. Another small pull of his attention. You realize too late how much you're giving away, when you see the thought behind his eyes, whatever he's cataloging for whatever reason, but he doesn't press it.

“Sometimes the places with the least oversight are the ones that know best how to take care of their own,” he says, almost like a proverb.

You nod. You’ve learned to let silences hold the things you don’t want to voice.

He drinks again, not watching you now, not exactly, but still aware of you. His presence wraps around the room like heat—delicate, thick, hard to ignore. You wonder if he’s just a traveler; surely not, with how handsome he is, how subtly elegant, the way he speaks. You wonder what he’s really looking for.

The thought doesn't go farther than that before a stool screeches from the back of the bar. Not the clean scrape of someone careful, but the lazy sprawl of someone who thinks the world owes him the space and time.

Jogo has been here since before the outage, hunched in the far corner like he’s part of the decor—one of the peeling posters or half-lit neon strips that doesn’t work right anymore. You should’ve made him leave with the others. You didn’t. You never do.

“Still no power?” His voice lurches into the dim, louder than necessary, too smug. “Place like this, surprised it had any to begin with.”

You press your palm flat to the bar. Not in fear—just to keep still. Shame flickers inside of you at the insult, a small flame, ever-burning; no pretending in the dark, no pretending you and your handsome stranger could be from the same world.

Jogo gets up, boots thudding against the composite floor. “Surprised you’re still running this place at all. Must get real lonely in here, huh?”

The sound of his approach stretches the silence thin. You don’t answer. Words feed men like him; it's always best to let them starve.

He stops at the bar, leans in with that breath like rot and synth-spice. “What’s wrong? Cat got your—”

He sees Suguru—who you don't know is Suguru, not yet—still half-sitting, one elbow resting on the counter like he’s got all the time in the world. Jogo must not have noticed him in the shadows before, but now he has, after the air has changed around him, gone colder, thinner. Like the room is holding its breath, too.

Suguru lifts his gaze to Jogo, calm as still water. "She’s busy," he says, voice smooth enough to be polite, but not a bit friendly. "Maybe try saying what you need without spitting."

The smile he wears is soft. Mannered, almost pleasant, though it doesn’t reach his eyes.

Jogo blinks, tries to laugh. It dies somewhere in his throat. “Didn’t mean anything by it,” he mutters, suddenly smaller. “Gonna smoke.”

He turns on his heel and stumbles out, too fast to be casual, too slow to be brave, and the door hisses shut behind him. The silence returns, heavier than before—but gentle, too. You breathe, slow, and let your hand drift from the counter. Suguru hasn’t moved.

When you risk a glance, he's watching you, eyes like dusk, plum-dark and unreadable, but not cruel, not smug; observant. Like he's measuring the weight of the moment and choosing not to tip it.

“Didn’t mean to bring any problems with me,” he says, voice low, dry with something like an apology.

You shake your head, smiling reflexively. “No problems, just finicky ghosts.”

He smiles, enough to show his teeth, and something sour in you eases, recedes. “That so?”

You nod once. It feels like the right answer.

He leans back again, and the moment should pass, but it doesn’t. Not really. The bar settles around you both like the world has exhaled, but there’s still something coiled in the space between you, waiting. Watching. Becoming.

TWO

Suguru comes and goes like a rumor—whispers first, then footsteps, then silence.

You don’t know what Suguru does, or what he has to do to come back. He doesn’t tell you, and you don’t ask—not because you don’t care, but because some part of you already knows it’s nothing soft. Whatever world he disappears into when he’s not here, it stains his silence, lingers in the way his eyes avoid yours when he’s too tired to pretend he’s fine. It sits between you like something alive and untouchable, a quiet, clawed thing neither of you dare disturb.

Sometimes he brings strange gifts—tokens you don’t understand, bought in currencies you’re sure you never want to learn. Once or twice, he shows up with that white-haired menace in tow, loud and too tall for your doorway, trying too hard to be funny and laughing like he owns the air.

But most of the time, it’s just Suguru, and the rain.

He comes when he wants to, leaves without warning, watches you too long sometimes, like he’s memorizing the shape of your silence. Like there’s something he wants from you but doesn’t know how to hold without breaking. And still, he never says why he comes, and, still, you never ask him to stay.

But the space between those two things—what you don’t say and what he won’t admit—is shrinking.

In the morning, you stir—bones stiff, muscles whispering their usual complaints—and the city mutters back outside your window, indifferent. Your apartment is still, small, the kind of place that remembers everything you’ve ever done in it, that won't let you forget.

You don’t want to wake up, but your body doesn’t care what you want. You shift, stretch, dreams still clinging to your lashes like cobwebs—and then you hear it: soft, wrong, from the kitchen.

And that easily, you’re no longer alone.

It only takes a breath for your nerves to remember themselves. You already know who it is. No need to ask.

The air has changed. Sweet, smoky, with something metallic curling at the edge; sharp, familiar, a memory you didn't have to invite back in. He’s here, Suguru, and of course he’s made himself at home again, like this place was carved to fit him and not the other way around.

The clock says six. Early, but time doesn’t mean anything to Suguru; he isn’t ruled by it, doesn’t bend to it. He arrives when he wants, leaves when he’s done, and you—you just let him.

The floor is cold beneath your feet. Not just icy—artificial, indifferent, the kind of chill that comes from old synth-tiling, worn thin by time and use. In the corner, your heater clicks to life with a tired hum, flickers once, then settles into its usual half-hearted wheeze. It’s trying, and failing, just like every other morning.

Suguru’s already steeped in the hush of the kitchen, the shadows wrapped around him like old friends. He doesn’t turn, just moves, slow and precise and controlled, the way he always does—tea, window, silence—and your exhaustion finds you again, soft and sudden. You should be used to this—used to him—but surprise has a way of wearing new faces; even the expected can weigh heavy.

His voice cuts through the morning, low and smooth. “Good morning.”

You rub at your eyes, suddenly too aware of yourself. Of the old pajamas clinging to your skin, the sleep still dragging at your limbs, the way your hair’s decided it has a mind of its own. Bare, vulnerable things.

Your words are dry, meant to sound casual. “Back so soon?”

He glances back, just enough. Eyes finding you like they were made to—slow, deliberate, full of something unreadable that still manages to see too much. You catch the shape of his smile in them before it ever touches his mouth.

“Don’t sound so disappointed.”

His ease scratches at something inside you. Not longing, not quite, something worse, maybe, that doesn’t have a clean name. The kind that slips into your throat and settles there. Every time he comes like this, unannounced, unbothered, it’s like he leaves part of his shadow stitched into your space when he's gone.

You sigh, slow and shallow, trying to collect your thoughts before they show on your face. “No Gojo this time?”

His name lands heavy in the room: Gojo—noisy, untouchable, always dragging storms in behind him. You already know the answer; if he’d come, it would have been obvious, because the walls would still be vibrating. He’s never hidden the disgust in his mouth when he talks about this place, your dirty little corner of the star-system, as if it's a smudge on Suguru’s reputation. Shame and relief crawl into your chest together and sit there, when Suguru shakes his head.

“He can handle things on his own every now and then.” A pause. A glance. “Don’t tell me you miss him.”

Your laugh breaks out too fast, too sharp. It’s loud and uglier than you want it to be, but real, the way everything Suguru drags out of you is.

He turns fully at the sound and steam curls from the mug in his hand, held like an offering. He doesn’t speak, just smiles—that Suguru smile. The kind that knows too much. The kind that doesn’t need words to press against you. His presence settles like warmth between you—just enough heat to stay. Just enough to forget it will burn when it leaves. You take the mug, fingers brushing his, barely, and he steps aside.

And then you see it.

A package on the counter no larger than your hand, plain brown paper folded with precision, sharp corners and clean edges and neatly tied with a band of thin copper wire.

You eye it warily. It looks expensive. More than that—it looks deliberate. That kind of care—small, quiet, meticulous—is more him than any signature. You feel it in your chest before your brain can catch up. No one else wraps things like that. Not in this city. Not for you.

“What's this?” you ask, already knowing he won’t answer the question directly.

Suguru just slides it toward you quietly.

You pick it up slowly, running your fingers along the cool surface. The band slips off with a soft click, revealing beneath the paper a slim e-journal—compact, beautifully made. The kind sold by back-alley specialists who don’t advertise but somehow always have a waiting list. The kind you’ve lingered near before, just to stare. A soft hum rises from it as the display lights up with a warm, golden pulse. Your name flickers in the top corner, small and elegant.

You blink. “These aren’t easy to get.”

Suguru doesn’t respond right away. His eyes flick to yours, unreadable. “You said your old one was glitching.”

You can’t even remember when you said that. Weeks ago, maybe, in passing. You doubt you even meant for him to hear it.

Your chest tightens, that odd pull of gratitude and disbelief tangling behind your ribs. You press your thumb against the screen, watching it open to a clean interface—blank pages, empty folders, but one tab already labeled: Home.

"Suguru…" you start, voice shaky, barely pushing past your throat.

He just tilts his head slightly, smile twitching at the corner of his mouth. “Don’t mention it.”

The journal hums gently in your hands, in response. It’s light, sleek, and somehow heavier than it should be. A gift like that isn’t about what it is, not with him, it’s about the way he remembers. The way he’s been gone for weeks, and yet, when he returns, he still knows exactly what you need.

You keep your eyes on the journal even after the screen fades to black, the glow slowly dimming beneath your fingertips. It feels like the only thing anchoring you, like if you let go too quickly, the quiet swell of feeling might show on your face.

He’s here. He brought you something. He thought of you.

And you like the way that feels. You don’t hate it—not at all. You’re just shy about the way it wants to spill over. You’re not sure what he’d do if it showed too obviously, but from the way he’s watching you, eyes half-lidded and amused, maybe he already knows.

You squish your lips together, trying to tide back your smile. “You know, I was managing just fine with my ancient, barely-functioning piece of junk.”

Suguru hums, warm and buttery. “Mm. I noticed.”

“I was!”

“You say that, but I watched you slap the screen four times just to open the calendar.”

“It still worked.”

He lifts a shoulder in a slow shrug, like the act of teasing you is something luxurious, a taste he wants to savor. “Barely.”

The air feels lighter already. You’re still holding the journal—still feeling the warmth of its casing, still tracing its smooth edge with your thumb like it might disappear if you let go.

You move to the kettle to keep yourself from lingering too long in your thoughts. The tea’s already ready, still warm in its ceramic pot. You pour him a cup without asking—it’s second nature by now—and the motion steadies you.

When you pass it to him, your fingers brush again. This time, the contact lingers just a little longer than it should, and you pretend not to notice how your breath catches in your throat. You don't dare meet his eyes.

“Thank you,” Suguru says, voice softer now. How many times will you have to say it back before you're even?

You nod once, keeping your arms folded loosely across your chest. “You didn’t have to bring anything, you know that, right?”

“I know.” He blows gently across the rim of the cup before adding, “but I wanted to.”

You glance at him out of the corner of your eye. The steam from his tea curls upward, catching the low light spilling through the window behind him. His expression is unreadable—somewhere between patient and quietly pleased. And it settles deeper than you expect it to.

“Well,” you say, small this time, “it’s nice. You’ve officially outdone yourself.”

Suguru leans beside you, shoulder brushing yours as he shifts. His presence is always heavy, but now it feels warm, grounding. “I’ll try not to make a habit of it.”

You let out a breathy scoff. “Liar.”

His mouth curves, a small, knowing smile. “Maybe.”

The silence that follows stretches—not tense this time, but gentle. Lived-in. The kind that doesn’t demand anything from either of you. Just... a moment shared. A stillness made from something softer than what this world usually offers.

When you finally look over again, he’s already watching you—eyes dark, but not distant.

This time, you don’t look away so quickly.

And for a second, everything feels suspended: his hand cradling the tea, the warmth of his shoulder against yours, the soft click of the journal as it powers down completely. The hush of the kitchen wraps around you like a secret, and you let yourself stay there just a little longer than you should.

THREE

Something eats away at him.

You don’t notice it at first—he’s always been distant, unreadable in ways that feel deliberate—but something shifts. Subtle at first, then sharp as a crack beneath ice.

Whenever the mask slips, Suguru speaks in riddles. About rot. About weakness. About the way curses cling to people like smoke in their lungs. Suguru never says what he means outright, but you start to understand that what he hunts is no longer just out there: it's in him now, settling deep. You’ve always been afraid to ask where he goes, what he does in the stretch between his visits—but one day, something starts ticking inside you, soft and slow, like a countdown. And you know you have to ask, soon, before the poison spreads.

He comes in just after midnight; a whisper of the stairwell, the slow press of the door, the scent of cold air and blood and rain. The room bends with his presence, drawn to him like gravity to a star, but tonight he is no source of light. Now he swallows it whole.

For a long, terrible moment, he simply stands there, tall, broad-shouldered, soaked through the folds of his coat. Hair down, black and heavy, falling like a curtain, hiding more than it shows. You don't speak. You don't want to fill up any more of the space than you have to.

Suguru crosses the room like a man half-remembering the shape of it, as though he’s not really here, not yet. His eyes skim the walls, the ceiling, the half-empty cup on the counter like it’s all unfamiliar, like he’s unsure whether he’s still dreaming.

He finds the edge of your bed—an altar he has never bowed to—and sits slow, deliberate. The same way someone eases into the bath after a long battle.

The silence feels brittle, glass under pressure. His hands are braced on his knees, fingers twitching, opening and closing like he’s trying to hold something he can’t quite name.

“Did you eat?” you ask, because you don’t know what else to say.

His gaze flicks to you. Something unreadable in the dark plum of his eyes, bruised purple, shadowed and strange.

“No,” he says. Then adds, almost like an afterthought: “I'm not hungry.”

You don't care if that's true or not. You have to do something with your hands, offer comfort made just for him, even if it's instant and simple and comes from a packet—but before you can leave the room, he asks:

"Do you think people are born evil?"

He’s not looking at you. Just at the floor, at the space between his boots, like the question fell out of him without permission.

“I don’t know,” you say softly, and it's true—you don't.

You never had time to wonder about things like good and evil, never had the luxury. Your choices were simpler, narrower. How to keep the lights on. How to make enough for the next meal. How to stay whole in a place that’s always trying to carve pieces from you.

But this—this is a crack in his armor, and through it you see the shape of his world. A world built on consequences, on lines drawn and crossed again. You wonder who you’d be if your life asked those kinds of questions, if every choice you made had to hold up under the weight of whether it was right or simply necessary.

Suguru looks up—and in that moment, he’s someone else. A snake in the grass, coiled so tight you hadn’t noticed his presence until too late. He remains seated on the edge of the bed, and you’re still standing, but the distance between you feels like a black hole, sucking you in; it doesn’t give you control, doesn’t make you feel safe.

“What if I told you they were evil? Would you believe me?”

The question hangs in the air, sharp and unsettling. You don’t like the way he asks—don’t like any part of it, truthfully, but this, especially, settles under your skin like a stain that won’t wash out. It makes you wonder if he’s lied to you. If he’s been playing you all along, smiling just long enough to hide the knife in his hand, to keep you from seeing the truth.

Suguru has always unnerved you, in ways you never quite could face. From when he stepped into your bar, drifting in from the dark street outside, bathed in the emergency lighting. Like a warning you were blind to.

Since he walked into your apartment tonight, his attention has been scattered, drifting through the room like smoke, but now it’s all on you. You thought you wanted it, thought you could handle it, but now, under the weight of his gaze, you feel like prey. His focus presses on you, slow and deliberate, until every breath feels too shallow. When he rises from the edge of your bed, you step back, head bumping into the wall of your cramped room. The space between you disappears with one swift motion, and suddenly, he’s right there—close, too close.

"Would you kill them if I told you to?"

The question hits you before you’ve even had a chance to form an answer. You shake your head, words bubbling out in a rush, helpless. "I don't know."

"If I told you they were born wrong, would you kill them?"

You don’t know. The answer drips out, thick and slow, but it's the truth. "I don't know."

"If I told you they were little demons, twisted and demented, brought nothing but death and ruin—would you kill them? Even if they were young?"

You can’t answer anymore. The question feels unceasing, endless, like it’s reaching beyond you. His eyes, once dark and intense, have gone empty—hollow like a well. You don’t know if he’s even still looking at you, if he sees you at all.

Then, you notice it—blood. Slowly seeping through the chest of his white shirt, dark and damp, spreading like ink across the fabric. The realization hits you harder than anything he’s said, because there’s truth in it: something has collapsed inside him, something broken that you couldn’t stop.

“Y—you’re bleeding.” The words sound too small, too stupid, leaving your mouth like an afterthought, but he's still so close, close enough that you could count the long, dark lashes of his closed eyes when he blinks—and something flickers across his face. A snap, and then everything cuts.

His expression barely changes from that haunted look, but his voice is steady when he says, “It’s nothing.”

“It’s not nothing.” The words leave you with more force than you expect, anger flickering beneath the surface of your worry. You latch onto it, grounding yourself with it, needing something to steady you against the unease crawling up your spine. “You’re hurt and you didn’t tell me.”

Suguru straightens, settling back onto his feet, back into his bones. It should be terrifying, how familiar he seems in that moment, how quickly he slips back into himself, but you're so desperate to get him away from that horror that you don't care.

His voice is sharper now, edged with something close to irritation. “Was I meant to?”

“You could’ve said you were bleeding.”

“It’s not new.”

“It’s new to me.”

That stops him. The space between now and the last time you saw him flickers behind his eyes—not like before, not like a wound he couldn’t name, but something else. A fact. A shared recognition: That was then. This is now. He is not whoever he was then. Not here. Not with you.

He closes his eyes, eventually. Breathes out a quiet sound, almost a hum. “It is,” he says. “I’m sorry.”

But he doesn’t step back. Doesn’t give you the space to go. There’s no hand on your wrist, no body blocking your path—but you know, with a kind of terrible clarity, that you couldn’t pull away from him right now, even if you tried.

It can’t be life-threatening, you realize, now that your heart isn’t pounding so loudly in your ears. Not a picked scab, but not a torn stitch either; the blood looks worse than it is, startling against the clean white of his shirt, thin and vibrant where it crosses in straight, resolute lines. In better lighting, you might have been able to see through the soaked fabric. You’re not sure that would do either of you any good.

The top two buttons of his shirt are undone, something so profoundly unlike him it feels like a slip in character, and the pale glimpse of his collarbones is distracting, delicate in a way you hadn't expected. You shouldn't be looking, but it's hard not to. Enticing in a way that pulls gently at your attention, makes your breath catch for reasons you don't want to examine, not with him so close. You almost can’t stop staring, can’t help but wonder what else you’re missing—until the corner of his mouth twitches. Barely, but enough.

You clear your throat and press your spine against the wall, like it might make more space between you. It doesn't. "How recent is ‘not new’?”

“Weeks,” Suguru says, casually—so easily it startles you. You’ve never talked about his work before, and you’re still not, not really, but you’re closer now than you’ve ever been, in too many ways. “I’m fine.”

“You’re fine now,” you say, not quite believing it. His smile tightens, enough that it reaches the corners of his eyes, though you wouldn't call it warm.

And then his hand moves. Slow, deliberate, like he’s afraid of startling you. His fingers rise until they hover beside your face, and when they finally make contact—just the backs of his knuckles brushing your cheek—it’s featherlight. Reverent. It’s not possessive, not even asking; it’s a question in the shape of a touch, and somehow you already know the answer is yes. The air between you grows impossibly still, as if the world stopped turning just to see what you'll do next.

Your heart stumbles. You’ve never seen him like this—not the version that walks in shadows, not the one who smiles like a blade—but something else. Something stripped down and aching. It terrifies you how badly you want him to stay.

His eyes don’t leave yours. They could lie, but they don’t. "Yes," he says, "I'm fine now."

FOUR

Not much time passes, surprisingly.

Days, maybe a week or two, though time stretches differently when you're waiting for something—or someone—you’re afraid won’t come back.

Outside, the neon gutters spit their color against the wet pavement. The air smells like ozone, like the sky’s about to split open again. Maybe it will. You wouldn’t mind. Rain makes everything seem farther away. The night is nearly over; you’ve wiped the counters twice, swept the floor even though no one spilled anything, stacked the chairs with a little more force than necessary. You move slower than you need to, hands lingering on small tasks just to stay busy, just to keep from looking at the door.

The place is quiet—finally—and you welcome it.

Suguru left as he always has: without reason. Something has changed, yes, but still, he left you in the same shape he always does—like the world has flipped itself inside out. He never leaves without unmaking something. Every return, every departure, carves a new gap into you. They don’t heal. You don’t even notice they’re there until you're trying to stand still and find you can't—until gravity presses in wrong, sideways, like it's trying to fold you in half.

You've never seen him that way, so unraveled. It's been replaying in your head on repeat, unending: what if I told you they were evil? Would you believe me? Sometimes you think you should’ve said yes. Not because you would believe it, but because maybe—just maybe—he would’ve stayed, but that thought brushes up against something inside of you that’s cold and rotten and not meant to be touched. It makes your stomach twist. You don't like who you are in that version of the story.

You tell yourself, maybe it's for the best that he's done, that he doesn't come back—but the thought feels distant, like it doesn't belong to you. Like it doesn't belong to him, either.

You don’t hear the door open, but you feel it, a shift in pressure, like the world exhaling. You turn just as he steps inside, though it's not quite the same as before; his hair is down again, though only half-way, not the wild ink-spill it was before, and his shoulders seem more relaxed, like he’s shed whatever that unseen weight was. He’s not walking with that same tight, controlled confidence; this is different, lighter, somehow, but there’s still something about him, something sharp behind the soft way he moves.

And he's not alone.

Two little girls are with him, though they haven't moved from the door, haven't commanded the space as he has. They're just watching. One of them has her arms crossed tight like a shield, the other clutches something—maybe a toy, maybe a scrap of cloth—pressed to her chest like it might anchor her. Both of their eyes seem too old for their small, round faces.

It's been playing in your head on repeat, unending: would you kill them? Even if they were young?

You stand there, unsure of what to say. The silence stretches, taut as a wire, until his voice cuts through it.

“It’s quiet tonight,” he says, lightly. Too lightly. Like he’s trying to smooth the air between you, pretend nothing’s changed. Maybe it’s for the girls’ sake. Maybe it’s for yours.

You open your mouth. Close it again. A question rises and flattens against your tongue. You don’t ask. He doesn’t offer. But that’s always been your dance, hasn’t it? The space between what’s said and what’s not.

He follows your gaze, then crosses the bar to stand in front of you. In front of them. “I’m tired,” he says, quiet and sharp. “Of that world, of the filth it feeds on. Of fools who think hurting someone small makes them strong.”

That word—small—lands like a dropped glass; the question you never asked answers itself, shattering quietly between you.

Suguru lifts his hand to your face, like he did the last time—but now the gesture is different. Looser. No tremble at the edges, no hesitation, as if he’s no longer afraid he might break whatever he touches.

His thumb grazes the arch of your brow, traces down to the soft skin beneath your eye. You think—maybe—he’s counting your lashes.

“I want them to live in a world that’s better than ours,” he murmurs, barely louder than a breath. “Safer.”

You've always thought Suguru was built from something other. Something finer, sharper, less breakable. A different species from whatever you are, clinging to the bottom rungs in your corner of the world, but now, up close, that divide feels thinner. Imagined.

You don’t know where he came from, not really, but you know where he is now. You’ve seen the edges of it, the pieces he hasn’t named and maybe never will, and they’re ugly. Embedded like grit beneath his fingernails, worn into the quiet lines of his face. Ghosts clinging to the hem of his voice.

You’re not the same. But there’s something unkind that lives in you both. Something heavy, and tired, and human. Something he wants to cut out—for their sake.

You glance back at the girls. They’re clinging to each other now, as if the world might fall out from under them at any moment, and the only thing they trust to hold is each other. Their small hands are tangled in fabric, sleeves bunched in fists, pressed so close they breathe as one. The sight turns something in your gut—sharp, instinctive, like a wire pulled too tight.

The thought that someone, anyone, had wanted to hurt them—had tried—makes your throat close. Your body moves before your mind does and you lean into Suguru’s touch. Maybe it’s deliberate, maybe it’s not, but his hand doesn’t hesitate. His fingers drift into your hair, curling there like a root finding soil, like he belongs.

For a moment, neither of you speak. You don’t have to. The quiet stretches, warm and fragile.

Then, softly—barely above a whisper—you say, “I don’t know where you’re going to find a place like that.”

Because you don’t. You’ve lived your whole life in the dirt of this city, in the cracks of what people like to pretend is order. You’ve never been offworld, never even dreamed of it, but you’ve heard enough to know there’s no such place waiting out there, not one untouched, not one that won’t eat girls like those alive the moment you look away.

Suguru hums, low in his chest. The sound rumbles through his fingers where they rest against your scalp.

“I’m not going to find it,” he says, quiet but certain. “I’m going to make it.”

And when he says it, you believe him. Maybe not in the way of miracles, but in the way storms believe in rain. His hand lingers in your hair a moment longer, then slides down, slow, catching at your jaw, your cheek. He doesn’t move away. You don’t either.

Behind you, one of the girls makes a soft noise on the tile, barely a scuff of her feet, but it tethers everything back to the moment. The realness of it. This isn’t a story. It’s a turning point.

Suguru glances toward them, then back at you. You're not used to seeing him like this, less worn, less closed off. Like the jagged edge he’s always carried has been tucked away for a moment of stillness.

“It's not going to be easy, and I’ll need someone who knows how to build things that last. Someone steady.”

He’s not smiling, but his eyes hold the weight of something close to it. Hopeful, uncertain, wanting. A line cast into a dark sea.

You could laugh, if it didn’t feel like your whole chest was shaking. There’s no question what he means. Not really.

The silence sits between you again, but it’s different now—waiting, watching. Becoming.

And when you speak, your voice is quiet, but it doesn’t tremble. “Someone like me,” you say.

Suguru's thumb brushes your cheek again, soft as a promise. “Exactly like you.”

[bkgexe]

I think we all let psycho-pass go too quickly. I know season one came out uhhhhhh thirteen years ago but I think we all need to get on it again

[bkgexe]

rotary devotion

caleb (love and deepspace) x reader ✾ part 2/2 ✾ 19.7 (35k total)

✾ info! part one

✾ tw! yandere-adjacent activities typical in canon. f!reader referred to w/ gendered language and she/her pronouns.

✾ notes! reminder of angst with a happy(ish) ending lmaoo. smut in this part uhhh they r pretty switch-y both of them so watch out for that also dry humping + oral f!receiving + they're both weird as hell. read on ao3 if u would prefer!

He’s done everything they’ve asked of him. He’s achieved one of the highest ranks in the Farspace Fleet. He’s reintegrated himself into your life somewhat smoothly. He’s become powerful beyond measure, refined his Evol to a point that his strength and precision are unmatched. Ever has modified him into something different, something he can’t come back from. He’s their perfect weapon. 

Surely this means they can fix you now. He has to have done enough.

Professor Lucius doesn’t usually respond to Caleb’s requests to meet, but he was insistent this time. He made threats he really had no place to make. Knows that their worst nightmare would be Caleb killing himself and wiping out all the progress they’ve made. They know he has the willpower to do it, too. He knows he’s just a weapon. Understands that ultimately, all he’ll become is a machine. He wants to live, but he wants you to live more.

His only regret would be leaving you permanently. Inflicting that trauma on you a second time and not being there when it comes time to heal. 

The professor always conducts his meetings in the gardens. Something about the positive impact of nature on mental well-being. A line straight out of a textbook. Lucius has never felt like a real person. He’s like a machine, too, even though he beats out Caleb in the competition of flesh and blood.

“Colonel.” Lucius has a hard time putting respect into his voice when he says this. As if Caleb got his position through Ever’s string-pulling alone, as if he didn’t put in hard work and sweat to get where he is. 

“Professor.” Caleb affords him the same courtesy. He doubts the piece of shit in front of him earned this title in any real, concrete way. 

Lucius has a watering can. He tilts it over some blooming azaleas, pink-white blossoms reaching up towards the sun. Droplets of water catch on the petals, pulling them backwards harshly, damaging the flowers. There are real groundskeepers that do this work, but Lucius likes to play at caretaker. “This must be important if you threatened to go to such a drastic extreme,” he says. He watches the azaleas sway in the light breeze instead of looking at Caleb. “Yet you’re wasting my time with silence.”

“I’ve done everything you wanted. And I’ll keep doing more,” Caleb says. He takes his hat off, worries the rim of it in his hand, the one he can feel with. If he can keep his nerves to this one spot, then the professor might believe that he’s approaching this with boundless confidence. “It’s time for you to fix her.”

The expression that overtakes Lucius’s face is grim. Something about it makes Caleb’s stomach twist uncomfortably, makes him feel like he’s about to be pushed off the edge of the gardens, fall to the ground below. 

He’s fifty floors up. The fall would be long. He’d think about you all the way down. 

“Are you really in a place to be making demands?” Lucius asks. “You don’t think I’ll actually let you end your life without my permission, do you?”

“I do,” Caleb says, “because you agreed to this meeting. Even if you have some kind of control over me, there’s a chance that it could slip. I’m a quick shot. Won’t even need five seconds.”

Instead of responding to the threat, instead of killing Caleb right out to prove that he’s unnecessary, instead of folding immediately because his plans could be rendered impossible—Lucius smiles. It’s a terrible, gut-wrenching thing. The smile of a man that hasn’t felt joy over anything except the suffering of others for too many years to count. “Well, Colonel, I have some wonderful news for you.”

Caleb doesn’t breathe. He’s afraid that Lucius is going to say that somehow, out of his sight for five minutes, they’ve already killed you. If your name comes out of the professor’s mouth, he doesn’t know what he’ll do. His heart rate is already climbing dangerously high, and he tries to breathe deep and even. Keep things calm inside of him. He can’t lose more than he already has.

“She no longer requires our help.”

It’s not at all what Caleb had expected to hear. Internally, his confidence falters. There’s information he doesn’t have. Something important they’ve neglected to tell him. Is this how you feel every time you find out something new he’s been keeping from you? No—he does that to protect you. Lucius has kept something important under wraps for this very moment, to undermine Caleb when he thinks he has an upper hand. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

That smile again. Sharp-edged, the way a wolf smiles its way into an animal’s skin. “Her aether core has been repaired. She found another fragment and used it to stabilize the one in her heart.”

[                                      ] telling the truth or not. [                     ] for you.

“Your silence speaks of confusion. I’ll make it simpler: she will live a long, healthy life. Well—as long and healthy of a life as a Hunter commonly lives. There’s no risk anymore.” Lucius nods, as if trying to cajole Caleb into nodding with him. “Everything you’ve done for us… We appreciate it, but it seems the reward you were seeking has already been granted.”

Everything he’s done for them. [                                                                                   ] forgive him. You wouldn’t. You wouldn’t, he’s sure of it. He [                                                                                                          ]. So you would be okay. So they would fix you.

“You should be happy. It’s what you wanted.”

You’ll be okay. You’ll be okay. Even as emotion crawls up his throat and makes him feel like he’s going to throw up, like he’s [                                                             ], he’s so relieved by the fact that you’re okay.

“I believe it was the Onychinus leader that helped her acquire the fragment she needed. Her lover. Seems his time was better placed than yours in the end, no?”

[                                                                                         ]. [                                                                                                ]. [                                                                            ]. [                                                                                                                     ]. [                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                             ]. [                                                                                           ]. [                                                                                                   ]. Her lover.  [            ]. [                                       ]. [       ]. Your [           ]. [                                                                                  ]. [                                                                                                                                                                                                                           ]. [                                      ]. [                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                          ]. [                                                     ]. 

The Toring Chip pulls him back from the precipice when he’s being yanked off of the professor, when [                                               ] and there’s blood on his hands. Lucius [                                              ], his nose surely broken, front teeth [                              ], but he still smiles. Nothing Caleb has done has been for anything, and [                                                   ] for you, because he loves you, because he would do anything for you. 

He fights against the guards that pull him away, metal arm freeing itself easily. They shouldn’t have made him so strong. He breaks [                                                     ] before they subdue him, before [                                               ]. He’s on the ground. His face is pushed into grass, into dirt. [                                                                                                ] and it meant nothing. It meant nothing. 

But you’re okay. You’re okay and he could cry with relief. He is, he thinks. Something is so deeply wrong inside of him and he doesn’t want to be that way. He loves you. He loves you so much. He loves you so, so much and you’re going to be okay. He [                                                            ] if he ever even so much as gets a glimpse of the guy that [                         ] you. Her lover.

Someone else took his job from him. He’s the one that’s supposed to protect you. That’s supposed to heal you. That’s supposed to be there when you need him. And he was gone for so long that you [                                                                        ] with someone that wasn’t him, and he’s going to kill someone. He’s going to kill someone. He’s going to put Lucius in the ground.

There was another way. Of course [                                          ]. Ever has lied to him so many times that he should have assumed, but there was another way to heal you. His impulsiveness got him here. If he’d just waited instead of believing them outright, he could [                                                                  ] and he would be whole and maybe you’d love him the way he wants you to.

Sound cuts in and out. It feels like his brain is a processor, overheating, melting into hardware. He hears the guards holding him down ask the professor if they should dispose of him and he laughs. Because he would love to see them try. He could break their necks easily if his head wasn’t pounding the way it is, if the chip wasn’t working overtime to subdue him. He could turn these people into paste. (She would be afraid of you. She would be so afraid.) He’s losing more of himself with every passing day, with every emotional lapse of judgement, and he wishes he could go back.

He just wants to be the boy that dried your hair for you after you showered, that sat with you on the porch in late summer and held you in his arms as you read to him from whatever book you were in the middle of. He didn't even need context for what you read to him—he just wanted an excuse to hear your voice for as long as he was allowed.

“Let him go,” Lucius says through the blood in his mouth. “He’s learned his lesson.”

When the guards let him go, he can’t stand up immediately. The cool dampness of the ground beneath him is the only thing that keeps his head from feeling like it’s going to cleave itself from his body. There are gaps in places there shouldn’t be gaps. (She can’t see you like this.) There are white spots in his vision that feel permanent. He claws at the ground with his hand and he can’t feel it, he can’t feel it, the same coolness that touches his face, that stains his skin.

His hand. His hand isn’t real. [                                                        ]. That’s why. Replaced. Cold metal. Can’t feel you with it. (Want to so bad.) Your lover. Can’t feel you with it at all and didn’t even know you’d memorized the details of him. The stretch marks that are gone. He loves you so much. Of course you’d notice. He loves you so much.

“Get up.”

Your palm against his chest. His heart beating under your hand. You could tear it out. He wants it to be yours. He loves you so much. Your lover. Summer heat, buzzing and sticky. Sitting on the porch with you. He can’t feel you with it. Cold metal. He loves you so much.

“You’re embarrassing yourself. Get up.”

Buzzing in his head, like the low drone of summer. Sticky heat. God, he wants you. Your lover. Caleb. I didn’t sleep with him. He needs you to know. He needs you to know. 

A foot nudges his side. His coat. The uniform of the colonel. He gets to his knees, then stumbles to his feet. His head is lightning, heat, pain. His vision is black at its edges. He needs you to know. Know what? Your lover. He loves you so much. Caleb. I didn’t sleep with him. Summer with you. (She likes to wake up at nine, so you’re up at eight.) Vacation, when he monopolized most of your time. Mornings he made you breakfast. In the afternoon, he took you to amusement parks, movies, any restaurant you wanted. You liked the shitty place a few blocks away that only did shakes and burgers and fries. (Don’t swear in front of her.) A little more upscale than other fast food places. No drive-thru. Strawberry or chocolate, sometimes with whipped cream. You changed your mind enough that he could never preemptively order for you. Didn’t want to get it wrong. It made him feel like he didn’t know you sometimes, the fact that he couldn’t tell what you were going to want just by your mood. 

He wants to be that boy again. 

He wants to be that boy again.

He wants to be that boy again.

He wants to be that boy again.

[                                              ].

“Colonel?” someone asks, and it’s your voice. It’s not your voice. You wouldn’t call him that. Caleb. He wishes it was your voice. (She shouldn’t see you like this.) He misses you. He wants something but he can’t remember what it is. He misses you. “ Colonel.”

“Yeah,” he says. His voice is rough, breaking in his throat. Trying to swallow past the feeling of the gravel in his mouth proves difficult. Trees stand tall above him, growing strong even on top of this building. The azaleas seem to glow, their pink and white blooms fully highlighted by the beaming sun. Their scent is on the breeze, light and honey-like. Spongy earth gives slightly beneath his feet. A fertile garden. A verdant paradise. Breathing deep used to ground him. Now it just reminds him that he’s alive.

A security guard stands in front of him. Lucius is gone. Probably to the infirmary. Blood still adorns Caleb’s knuckles. Dirt is caked into the knees of his slacks. (You’re disgusting.) The guard crosses his arms, impatient. He’s asked Caleb to do something that he didn’t hear. Leave, probably.

“I’m going,” Caleb says. 

The guard doesn’t stop him. He stalks back through the garden, into the professor’s observatory and to the elevators. There’s a destination in his heart, somewhere he needs to be so badly he could choke on it. 

He needs to find you. He needs to find your lover.

˚✧ ﾟ.

His childhood, a list of wants: safety, warmth, food.

There were no parents in the picture, as far back as he can remember. Fate twisted unfortunately, putting him in a foster home run by a group of scientists. Foster home was too good a word for what it really was—an orphanage, essentially, that just managed to pass during inspections by governmental child care services.

Ten kids, including you. The lab across the street. Constant visits, though he managed to avoid them for a long time. Sometimes kids didn’t come back. Adopted, the matron of the house would tell everyone. No one thought about it too hard. It meant there would be more food for the rest of you. 

Each item on his list, crossed off daily. Just. He learned to be self-sufficient, learned the finer points of dealing with people. The matron liked him best because he was charming, kind, looked out for the other kids. The kids liked him best because he would give them his treats, breaking whatever candies or baked goods he received into pieces to share with everyone else. There are laws to give and take. People follow them because they’re born into them. They don’t even realize they’re adhering to doctrine.

But Caleb realized. He knew, even at eleven, the basics of what made people tick. 

They took you the most often. Something changed at a certain point, and Caleb was no longer the favorite. You were—quiet, tiny you , with your small voice and empty eyes. At first, he resented you for it. You’d get bigger portions than anyone else, the way he used to. He lost some of his leverage with the rest of the kids. Less to share with them. He lost special privileges with the matron. Staying out later to play with his friends from school became more of an argument, asking for any sort of allowance was rendered impossible.

You acted like you didn’t know anyone. It bothered him. It made him seethe, in fact, that even though you were younger than him, you acted like you were above him. So he did what he was good at. He observed you. Watched, learned, interacted with you more to try to get a read on you. Laughed with you, told the same jokes he told everyone because it made them feel secure. You can always trust someone you can laugh with. Slowly, he came to understand. It wasn’t that you were acting like you didn’t know anyone.

You were forgetting. They were making you forget.

Every time you went to that lab, you came back with your eyes even emptier, your hands always balled into fists. You chewed on the ends of your hair and sat on your bed and didn’t move until mealtime. Because you were scared. You didn’t know any of these people. You didn’t know where you were. 

Caleb’s list of wants was small. Self-sufficient. But he considered, even then, what it would feel like to extend that list to you. Safety, warmth, food. He had never been a provider. Taking was easier for him, especially when he could do it with a boyish smile and an ingratiating thank you.

They started bringing Caleb to the lab on his twelfth birthday—and before then, he thought he understood. He thought he had come to understand you.

The worst part was that they didn’t make him forget. Or maybe that wasn’t something they were doing—maybe your brain was rewiring itself, protecting you from the things inside that building. From the serums injected between fingers, the centrifugal stress tests, the cell mutation, the machines that froze the body to a point of near-death and the machines that would warm it until it felt like being burned alive, the Evol amplifiers, the sensory-deprivation chambers, the forced body enhancement, the interviews with their questions that didn’t make any sense but felt terribly important.

Caleb grew eleven inches in three weeks. None of his clothes fit him. His skin burned—burned like it did in the machines, burned with the way it was begging his bones and muscles to stop expanding, burned with the wrongness of his sudden growth spurt.

His childhood, a list of wants: food, quiet, relief from the pain.

Taking care of you started with reintroducing himself every time you returned from across the street. Turned into removing the ends of your hair from your mouth when you were anxious, letting you play with his instead. He’d go to school with tiny little braids in his hair that you left there, brush it off when anyone made fun of him. Portions of his food were saved for you. You always got to shower first, when the water was hottest. The matron would sometimes put the best treats aside for him, old loyalties, and they would be yours without you even having to ask.

Each time you forgot sent him back to the beginning. Slowly, you would begin to talk to him. Slowly, you would begin to smile. He could do this as many times as you needed. Even when his bones ached with a pain that no child should ever have to know, he would make sure that you were clean and fed and content as possible with the life the two of you had been given.

The number of children in the foster home dwindled and he started getting restless. Started worrying when they took you away, even though it was clear that something about you was very important to the people across the street. If you didn’t return, he didn’t know what he would do. He’d already gained incredible control over his Evol. He made you laugh by floating things in the air, sailing paper airplanes across the cramped space of your communal bedroom. They made him do more at the lab. They made him crush things even bigger than him. Cars, tons of solid metal, massive slabs of rock.

Sometimes smaller things. Sometimes things that were scared, that reminded him of you in their innocence.

It was hard for him to touch you after those days. You’d ask him to braid your hair and he’d have to say no, even though it killed him to say no to you. Because he didn’t deserve it. Didn’t deserve to touch you and find solace in your presence when he was capable of such things.

His childhood, a list of wants: your safety, your happiness, a place to rest his head.

The Chronorift Catastrophe itself couldn’t touch his small list of priorities. The woman that found him in one of the camps for lost or orphaned children was one he recognized. At first, he was scared. She had interviewed him once. Twice, she had been the one administering the needle into the delicate skin between his fingers.

But she made it clear that something about now was different. She didn’t want to take him back there. She promised. And though he would never say this out loud—there were things he knew he could do if she reneged that promise. Things he would hate himself for, but things that were necessary.

He needed the help of an adult. Of someone that had some kind of power, some kind of status after Linkon was nearly destroyed. I don’t know where she is, he told her—and she knew he was talking about you.

The worst part about rebuilding his life after the Catastrophe was that you had forgotten again. It felt more significant this time. A new home that he was learning at the same pace as you. He didn’t know how to protect you because he didn’t know what threats to look out for.

Josephine was kind. Caleb would tell this to anyone that asked. But there was something stopping him from forgetting the way she looked at him when she administered the needle—the way she looked through him, the same way he was sure she had looked through you. 

And it’s not like the experiments didn’t leave their mark. He had his own problems, sure—frequent body aches, chills that put him in cold sweats for hours, joint freezes that he had to push through, forcing himself past limits that couldn’t be breached healthily—but yours were worse. Whatever they’d done to you left you with a heart condition that had to be monitored. Doctor’s appointments every other week, medication that ruined your appetite. He tried to keep you fed, but it was hard when the idea of eating pushed you to tears. You hated the hospital. You hated the medication. You hated the pain. How could he ever look Josephine in the eye and genuinely thank her for taking the two of you in when this is what her experiments had done to you?

Caleb was very good at a lot of things. Gifted, one might say, if you only considered the pretty parts of the consequences of his childhood. He was not very good at forgiveness. 

It’s why he was never fully able to let go, allow Josephine to take care of the two of you alone. Caleb always considered himself your caretaker. He was the one that was looking out for you first—Gran was just a necessary second, a legal adult that would assure you both had a roof above your heads that you couldn’t be taken from.

Stability helped. You adjusted quicker with less stress. Smiled faster, began talking to him like a friend within a week instead of a month. It was enough for him. His list of responsibilities fulfilled. His purpose was to be there for you. 

Even when you were at school, in different grades, he would find you at lunch. Abandon his friends to sit with you. When he aged out of your school building and started attending the high school down the street, he had a long talk with the principal that allowed him to leave his last class twenty minutes early to pick you up every day. 

People are the same. They’re driven by wants and needs that are so easy to take apart, to play into. He could be your best friend, taking you to the mall on weekends to shop with you. He could be your guardian, chiding you when you stayed out too late with a friend. He could be your doting older brother, picking you up everyday to walk you home. Whatever other people needed him to be in order for them to allow him to be right next to you.

It didn’t matter what they thought. What he was to you was different—something deeper, too nebulous to be titled. He was your everything, and you were his. As it should be.

The time he spent with your hair was sacred to him. His favorite memories of your childhood: pulling at the ends to bother you, massaging shampoo into your scalp with firm and careful fingers, lying his cheek against the top of your head and breathing in the scent of you. 

You let it grow out after moving into Gran’s. As it got longer, it should have become more of a nuisance. Another thing to take care of. But because it was a part of you that he got to care for, he never really minded it. He researched styles, spent hours watching videos on hair care, monopolized your time at home so he could practice on you. He wanted to take such good care of your hair because it was important to you. Something he found out while doing another thing he shouldn’t have been doing. 

Eavesdropping was second nature to Caleb. Growing up the way he did, he always tried to be a step ahead. To know when you would be taken across the street, when he would. To see if he could glean any information about what was going on from the adults that purportedly cared for the two of you. He’s no different at Gran’s house.

A conversation he overheard, Gran on the phone with your therapist: post-traumatic stress disorder, an unhealthy attachment to things that feel familiar. To your hair, to your few remaining belongings that made it through the Catastrophe, to Caleb. Anything that felt like it was intrinsically yours. 

He focused on the hair because focusing on the implications of him being intrinsically yours, even then, could have torn him apart. Could have made him jump the gun at fifteen, to tell you that somehow he knew that he would always be yours, that you were destined to be side-by-side for life. Even in death, he wanted to rest beside you.

Something was very wrong with him. He knew this, even then. Knew that if he went to therapy like Gran wanted, they would pick him apart the way they’d picked you apart. They’d say he had post-traumatic stress disorder, impostor syndrome, a protector complex. That he was unhealthily attached to you—that he believed you were intrinsically his. 

This was all easy to figure out on his own time. It wasn’t that he wanted to be ignorant to the things wrong with him—he could just deal with it by himself. He didn’t need other people to tell him what was wrong and then give him some half-assed advice on how to be better. The things that were wrong with him weren’t going to make his life worse. They were going to make your life better. He’d always be there for you, whatever you needed, whatever complex that meant he had or whatever attachments that meant he had formed.

His childhood, a list of wants: your comfort and to exist beside you. And he knew he could provide comfort to you, despite his shortcomings. 

He was sixteen when he received his first confession. There wasn’t a point before that where he had considered dating anyone—even considered romance as a concept in his life—and that extended to after. You didn’t like it when he explained what had happened. He was kind, as always, and turned the girl down nicely. You took the card the girl had written for him, still unopened in a cream envelope adorned with shooting star stickers, and ripped it apart. 

There isn’t a clear, defining moment in his past where he knew you would always be where he wanted to end up. But this moment serves as a clear indication in his head of the beginning of the messy period where he had to figure out the extent of what he wanted from you.

Caleb hated the attention he got in high school. No one knew him but you—he made sure of that. And yet droves of guys and girls would line up to give him little gifts at the end of the school years, would pass him notes in class asking if he liked anyone, would get close to the other guys on the basketball team in an effort to find out things about him. It was all because of his past—the body given to him through unnatural means, the charisma he learned through trauma.

He resented people for wanting him for those things. But he didn’t really care either way what they thought about him. He was eighteen years old when he became positive that the only person he was ever going to date was you. He’d marry you, too, if that’s what you wanted. A massive wedding that he’d spend his entire savings on, or something small, just friends, even just the two of you. Or you didn’t even have to get married, if you didn’t like the idea of that. Whatever you wanted. Whatever way you would have him. He was yours down to his veins, down to his blood, down to his cells. He belonged to you.

When you received your first—and only—confession in high school, Caleb realized that it went both ways. You belonged to him, too. 

You told Caleb about it right after school, like you couldn’t keep it in. You were terrible at keeping secrets from him. He loved that. The guy asked you out on a date, said he’d seen you around and thought you were so pretty, that he’d be kicking himself if he didn’t ask you out.

The guy was a soccer star. Tall, handsome, nice enough. In Caleb’s year, which meant he was too old for you. He’d be going to college on a scholarship the same time Caleb would start at the DAA, because he decided he could provide for you as a pilot. This guy would be an athlete in college and then do some shitty, run-of-the-mill job afterwards. (Don’t swear in front of her. You have to be a good example.) And who did he think he was, asking you out now ? Was he gonna date a high-schooler while in college? Had he even thought about how he’d keep in contact with you while he was away? How he’d make sure you were eating enough, make sure that you were happy?

No. Of course he fucking didn’t. (Language. Careful.) Caleb was the only guy thinking about these things that young. It was okay if it was him because he was meant for you. He’d take things at your pace, obviously—he was just getting everything ready for your future together. He liked to be prepared.

So he talked to the guy. Of course he was nice about it. Didn’t want to embarrass anyone. Just told him to keep his distance, that you were off-limits.

What are you, her brother? 

No, he said, and no, no, no, no, no, he wasn’t even though some people liked to say that he was, he wasn’t because he was going to be yours one day and you were going to be his.

Then what’s the problem? C’mon, man—doesn’t she look sweet?

Sweet. The way he said that about you. A suggestion.

Caleb attended a soccer game for the first time that Saturday. It was a shame that the guy who called you sweet fell the way he did while shooting and tore his Achilles tendon. He lost his scholarship. Couldn’t run anymore. Need that in soccer. Those kinds of injuries never fully heal. 

No one asked you out after that. Other students looked at him in the hallways and whispered, all speculating on his Evol, the rumor of its power. Didn’t the guy that fell ask out his little sister, or whatever she is to him? No, surely Caleb—golden boy Caleb, captain of the basketball team and all around great guy—wouldn’t do something so drastic. So insane.

Sweet. Sweet. 

Things like desire were foreign to him until they weren’t. The guys on his team always talked about women in ways that disgusted him, in ways he couldn’t even begin to comprehend. Just like the guy that fell and hurt himself. They talked about what they wanted to do to the models they saw on social media, even to the girls they shared classes with—and he just didn’t understand it. The depravity.

And then one day he got home from shooting hoops at the park with his friends, and he needed to shower before he saw you because you always complained when he was sweaty from playing sports. Without even thinking, he opened the bathroom door—and you were changing into something comfortable for the night. All he saw was the exposed skin of your back, the curve of your ass in black underwear, the softness of your thighs. He closed the door as quickly as he could and apologized. Apologized again. 

He had been hard in his lifetime, obviously, but he was so hard he couldn’t think. Just the image of you in his brain, the idea of him touching the soft skin of your lower back, his hand cupping your ass and squeezing just enough to hurt. (You shouldn’t want to hurt her.) Sweet. He got it. He understood and he hated himself for it.

He was appalled at his own thoughts for a long time. This pushed him away from desire in other ways. He felt sick when his friends started talking about sex, about what they were doing at parties with other people. He refused to get himself off, which led to a lot of long evenings lying in bed staring at the ceiling and a lot of ice-cold showers. He rarely gave in to his desires, but when he did, he couldn’t look you in the eye for a week. If he came in his sleep it didn’t count. Dreams didn’t count, even though each one heavily featured you and your soft, pliable body under his hands. He was overly sensitive, pent-up. You’d brush past him in the kitchen and even the feel of your hip bumping his, the smell of your shampoo, would get him so hard he’d have to excuse himself and lie down.

Everyday was an exercise in restraint. An exercise in self-hatred. (You’re disgusting.) He’d already decided he was going to be with you forever, but you didn’t think of him like that yet. He was going to be good for you and wait. He would still talk to you all the time and take you to the mall and braid your hair for you and listen to you read to him and he would be good .

And he was. He went to the DAA Academy and he was. But it was easier to give in when he was alone. Without you one room over, the guilt felt less like a vice and more like a garment. He wore it without being strangled by it—but he still wore it.

The first time he purposefully got himself off in years was with a scrunchie you’d given him to take to school braided through his fingers. It wasn’t the most pleasant sensation. There was no lube or spit because he didn’t want to ruin anything that was yours. Besides—he wanted it to hurt, because then he was paying for thinking about you like this. It took maybe four strokes. He came so hard that he couldn’t stop the loud, strung-out whine that rose from his throat, couldn’t look at himself in the mirror when he went to the bathroom to clean up, couldn’t stomach the guilt when he hand-washed your scrunchie in the sink with dish soap.

Rationalizing his behavior became a practiced skill. Everything he thought about you that was somewhat akin to sweet was okay—because you were going to want him the way he wanted you. One day, he would touch you the way he imagined touching you and you would sigh into him, you would tell him that it’s okay to need you the way he does, that you need him just the same. 

(Disgusting. Disgusting. You can’t choose this for her.) But he wasn’t choosing it for you. It’s just how things would happen. No one else knew your likes and dislikes, the way your tone of voice changed when you were asking for something. No one else knew how to take care of you when you were tired and didn’t want to ask for help. No one else knew the way you liked your hair braided, your favorite meals, your picky nature when it came to the preparation of tea and coffee. He could know you in other ways. More intimate ways. He would know all of it. You wouldn’t have to worry about a thing. No one could love you the way he could. 

He grew into adulthood knowing this. He was the only one that could protect you. That could save you from your own body, from the experiments that shortened your lifespan by whole decades. You couldn’t die before him. If you did, he would’ve failed. He made contact with scientists in lofty organizations, he charmed his way into meetings with people that a DAA pilot could never be important enough to meet. He was going to protect you forever and always. Like wedding vows. Because you couldn’t leave him. He wouldn’t let you.

The plan had been in place since you graduated high school. The first real secret Caleb ever kept from you. The first one he felt bad about. So when you both returned to Gran’s during your first ever vacation from the Hunter Academy—when you sat with him on the porch like everything was normal until it wasn’t—he had to stop himself. What’s going through your head, baby? he asked. Couldn’t help it. Called you baby in his mind every single fucking day, because you belonged to him and he belonged to you. Your face in his hands. God, he wanted to kiss you. He wanted anything you’d give him. Whatever you were ready for. But he knew he was going to have to leave you. To protect you, to heal you. It would be better to wait until after. If he kissed you then, knowing he’d have to leave you, break your heart—it would be messier when he came back. 

It was for the best. This way, you could be together for the rest of your lives. Once he came back, did what he had to do for Ever, everything would work out. 

His life, a list of wants: you and nothing else.

˚✧ ﾟ.

Caleb breaks more than a handful of laws figuring out the identity of your lover.

Getting into the Hunter Association’s database was as easy as monitoring its access port and lifting a username and password from the first person he saw log in. Their information is a joke—a name, a voice file, some info on the guy's Evol—but it does lead him to some of his connections in the more dangerous parts of town. 

Obviously, people don’t want to talk. The leader of Onychinus—a dreadful figure, someone with no remorse, who kills with a snap of his fingers. He can’t believe you got mixed up with this guy. But it’s hard for his contacts to ignore him when he’s hitting them with enough G-force that their legs begin to shatter, and that makes getting a name and some poorly-scrubbed CCTV footage easy. (She would hate you if she knew you were doing this.) 

Sylus. He’s younger than Caleb thought he would be. Still too old for you. He’s handsome, and Caleb is sure that he’s charming, too. He’s probably playing you just like that asshole that asked you out when you were a sophomore in high school. 

He’s gonna break this guy’s teeth. He’s gonna go to the N109 Zone and scrub Onychinus from the planet like a stain.

But first, he has to talk to you about it. He hasn’t slept in thirty-six hours. Nowhere near as bad as he had to put up with in pilot training, but still. His adjutant is keeping everything in order at the Fleet. Something feels like it’s ending, and Caleb isn’t completely sure whether or not it’s his own life.

When he checks your location, you’re at home. It’s nine at night, so you shouldn’t be in bed yet. He comes directly from the other side of town. There’s still blood on his knuckles. Dirt still stains his slacks, the elbows of his coat. His face, he’s sure. He hasn’t tried to see what he looks like, even though he usually likes to make himself somewhat handsome for you. You’ll have to forgive him this one time.

Caleb only second-guesses coming straight here when you open the door after he knocks—your face immediately twists in concern, your hands go to the sides of his face to brush away dirt, blood, whatever’s left behind from the past two days. 

You pull him into a hug and he could almost forget everything. He wraps his arms around you and curls into your embrace and he could just be whatever you want him to be. It doesn’t matter if you’re with someone else. (It does. It does. She shouldn’t be with him. You can be better than him.) Just let him stay. Let him be with you however you’ll allow. He’ll take anything. He’ll be your guard dog if you want. Stay awake every night at the foot of your bed. Turn his face into your hand to feel your warmth when you praise him for being good. He’d take that. 

His head hurts so badly, even though he’s not missing anything right now. Maybe it’s the lack of sleep. Maybe he can never let himself rest enough to feel the extent of his pain until he’s with you, where he can finally be himself. He considers it a weakness—that vulnerability that you claw out of him. But it’s yours to claw out, like anything else you might want from him.

You’re talking to him. He didn’t realize. His head is roaring so loudly that he couldn’t hear your pretty voice. Your hand is in his hair. Fingers gently massaging his scalp. Isn’t he supposed to be the one doing this for you? Your other hand runs down his back, wraps around his waist. Pulls him closer. That’s all he wants. Closer.

“Tell me what happened,” you say. “Please.”

He wraps his arms around you, and he winces at the movement. His joints are aching, skin burning, body screaming at him to rest. It reminds him of high school. It reminds him of everything that’s ever been done to him and all he can’t have and all he wants—a small list, the contents of which are too much to ask for.

“...a bath, if you’re hurting,” you’re saying. Holding him. It feels like he’s floating in and out of his head. He wants you to hold him always. He’s scared to ask you the thing he needs to ask you. You look up at him and you’re worried, which you should never be about him. “We can get your joints loosened up. Okay?”

He nods. Whatever you want. You smell so good. Did you shower when you got home from work? He loves the conditioner you use. You’ve used it since late high school. He knows exactly when you switched, actually. Beginning of junior year. This brand helped your ends stop splitting so quickly after Caleb would cut your hair. Did anyone cut your hair for you after he left? Or was this dramatic change the first time you’ve cut it since he died?

“You’re gonna have to let me take you to the bathroom, though.”

Your voice is so pretty. Everything about you. (The prettiest girl in the world.) He was always so blown away by you when you’d buy new dresses, do your hair nicely. Nothing compared to when you dressed up for his graduation in the dress he’d bought you, though. He nearly lost his mind. He bought that for you. He provided for you, picked out what you were wearing. It was one step removed from dressing you himself. His ears are ringing, his head pounds. He wanted to steal you away then. To keep you somewhere separate from everything else, to make you his in all the ways that mattered. He loves you. You're wearing one of his old shirts. He can feel the material pilling beneath his fingers. He loves you.

“Hey—please. Look at me, baby.”

It’s the term of endearment that does it. He likes that. He wants to see your face when you call him that. “Baby?” he asks, almost teasing, pretending that he doesn’t feel like he’s been shredded to pieces inside because even if you did really call him that, there’s another man you’re saying it to as well.

“Caleb,” you say—no, repeat. He misheard you. You didn’t call him baby. 

There was a steadiness to your voice, a confidence that made him believe you were calm in this situation. When he really looks at you, he can see that isn't how you actually feel. Maybe you did call him baby. Maybe he’s knocked you so far into anxiety that you’re not thinking straight. You look sick from worry. Lines between your brows, marring your forehead. You’re worrying your bottom lip between your teeth. Without your arms around him, both hands are clinging on to his lapels, nearly shaking. And your eyes—

You’re scared you’re going to lose him again. He realizes it too late. Why else would he show up like this, bloodied and worn, in the late hours of the night? The last thing he wants to do is make you feel like this, and once again, he’s been selfish. You’re his priority, but he keeps unintentionally putting himself first. 

“I’m not going anywhere,” he tells you, and you visibly relax. Not completely, but some. Your shoulders lower, your grip on his coat leaves the realm of white-knuckling.

You take his hand and bring it to your face—like you’re about to kiss his knuckles. You don’t. Wishful thinking. You examine the skin. It’s the hand he can feel, two knuckles split and the rest patched in dried blood. (You came here to ask about her lover.) He should. It’s important. You touch the scar on his ring finger, the one he got protecting you years ago. When you do actually end up bringing his knuckles to your mouth, pressing a gentle, meaningful kiss to the scar, his thoughts feel less important. 

You gaze up at him with that look in your eyes and he can’t deny you. You’re everything to him. “Let’s get you cleaned up. Okay?”

Caleb follows you to the bathroom, watches you run the tub, put in the same bubble bath solution that he used to use when you were younger. Orange blossom scented, with epsom salts. The one he used to pick up from the drugstore when he was around thirteen because the burning in his skin returned. Crying out against his natural growth spurt after he’d already had his artificial one. You were too young to know that. Or—you weren’t, but Caleb wanted to keep that information from you. How often he was in pain, how much it affected his day-to-day. All you knew was that Caleb took baths, so you wanted to take baths too. 

One of his most precious memories: your elbow was injured from softball practice, but you needed to wash your hair. You, in a swimsuit in the bathtub. Caleb, on his knees behind you. It’s the only time he’s ever been there for the whole process. The shampoo and conditioner, assorted lotions you left in afterwards. The comb he used to detangle your hair held firm in his hand, tacky with product, until it cramped. The whole moment is steeped in orange blossoms, the smell of your damp skin. The feel of his hand cupping the back of your neck longer than necessary to keep you still. 

You face him, the water running, that same scent in the air. Floral, light, with a slightly earthy undertone. And quietly, you begin to undress him. His breath catches in his throat. He can’t move. You push his jacket over his shoulders, let it fall to the ground. Undo the buttons of his shirt. Pull its ends from where they’re tucked in, let that fall on top of his coat. 

When you start taking off his slacks, he catches both of your hands in one of his. The wrong one, mechanical. He wants to feel you. He can’t stop staring at the point of connection, how much bigger he is than you—and despite the clear disparity, the power he could have over you, your fingers hook into the top of his belt buckle. “I can do this part,” he says, but his voice is pitchy. He’s not good at hiding how he feels when it comes to you. Especially not when you’re touching him. His mind blanks, he loses a little piece of his sanity that’s always belonged more to you than to him.

You nod. Don’t make a move to try to free yourself. Your fingers stay there, curled into his belt. The tops of your knuckles graze his stomach right above the band of his slacks, your skin meeting coarse, dark hair and the veins that he’s always thought run a little too visibly south of his waistline, and he has to stop himself from moaning at just that—such a light touch that he feels sick in the head at how much it affects him. 

“I want everything off,” you tell him. And then you pull away and turn around.

Caleb can feel that his face is hot. Knows how obvious that must be to you. He removes his shoes, his socks. (You should’ve taken them off at the door. You’ll have to clean her floors for her later.) Peels off his dirt-stained slacks. And you said everything. He’s already achingly hard. Your knuckles on his stomach, your fingers curled into his belt. It doesn’t take much for him when it comes to you. He doesn’t want to scare you.

It feels like a power shift—asking him to undress when he’s like this, when you’re still fully clothed—but you’ve always had power over him. It doesn’t matter how vulnerable Caleb makes himself in front of you. You’ve always had access to all of him, whether you wanted it or not. So he does as you ask. “Now what?”

“Get in the tub, obviously,” you say. He can tell you’re rolling your eyes. Wishes you would turn so he could see it. So you could see him. 

Would you like his body? It’s a good one. It serves its purpose. He takes care of himself. Needs to, for his job, but also because he wants to be desirable to you. It’s never felt like it’s his. The muscles, the height—how much of that was given to him? Forced upon him? Even if it’s not fully natural, he can at least make it into something you would want. That’s why he’s so careful about his diet, so precise with his work outs. He doesn’t want there to be anything you could find that you wouldn’t like. If he’s perfect for you, then there’s one less reason for you to leave him.

He gets into the bath. It’s not like the one you had in the house growing up, free-standing and large. It’s a smaller apartment. The bath is caged in on three sides by tiled walls, a small shower head juts out of the tile four feet above him. He’s too tall for the shower, too large for the entire space. His knees protrude from the water awkwardly. You probably fit in here perfectly. Damp skin, the smell of you when you’re warm and wet. He hopes you blame the unintentional noise he makes on his body being tired and the feeling of lowering himself into the warm water.

The bubbles are built up to a point where he’s pretty sure you won’t see how hard he is for you. He doesn’t want to scare you. He doesn’t want to scare you. You’re going to touch him. He’s decently sure of it. Take care of him the way he should be taking care of you. He doesn’t want to scare you, but the sheer scale of his want for you is enough that sometimes he thinks the stitching at his seams could come apart, that he could turn into someone different entirely just to finally find out how you would say his name when he fucks you.

He puts his face in his hands, pushes his index and middle fingers against his closed eyes until it hurts. (Disgusting. She’s taking care of you and you’re thinking about her like this.) He takes a deep, shaky breath as quietly as he can. There’s no way you don’t hear him in the small bathroom. “Okay, I’m in,” he says, and he wishes that just once he could control himself when it comes to you. That he could stop thinking like this when you’re caring for him, that his voice wouldn’t sound that fucking pathetic when he spoke to you, that he could be the same boy that washed your hair when you were teenagers and it was all so innocent. He loved you then. He loves you now. It sounds simple. He wishes it was simple.

He wants to be that boy again. Remembering something he’s forgotten is always painful. His eyes burn. He can smell the epsom salts more than the orange blossoms now, the mineral tang of rock and earth.

You lower yourself to your knees. The bath prevents you from being behind him, the way he was when he washed your hair. You’re at his side with a washcloth, and you put out a hand, palm up. Waiting. “I need to clean the cuts.”

Of course. You’ve gotten so good at taking care of him. Maybe when he left, you learned because you suddenly had to take care of yourself. There was no one else to do it. No one who would do it right, at least. “I should be doing this myself,” he says. Offers you his hands despite this.

You remove the blood from his knuckles gently. Thoroughly. The cuts aren’t as bad as they looked before, with their aftermath adorning them. “Thank you for letting me.”

You know him so well. Better than anyone. You know how much he hates letting people down like this—letting you down. He’s the one that’s supposed to be strong. That shouldn’t need this. He was built for it. If anyone else ever saw him like this, he would kill them. Not because he can’t admit weakness—because this is only for you. His vulnerability is only for you. You don’t need to thank him for it.

“Will you tell me what happened?” you ask. 

“Question for a question?” Like when you were both little. He just wants you to answer him honestly.

You let his hands fall, satisfied with your cleaning of his wounds. “Okay,” you say, a little hesitant. Like you always are with him now. You drag the washcloth across the width of his shoulders, then back and up the length of his neck, dampening the hair at his nape.

He leans into your touch, lets his eyes close. How often he’s wanted to be at your mercy. Something in him wants you to hurt him, to take back your pound of flesh. Do the very thing he did to you. “I was given some intel I had to follow up on.”

“That’s… vague.” You massage circles into the back of his neck, thumb and forefinger on either side of his spine. Gentle, with the washcloth, but firm.

Quietly, appreciatively, he groans. A noise pulled from deep within him, part of him that hasn’t been treated with this kind of care before reacting. Autonomic. Tears on his face. Burnt neurons. Your lover. “Who’s Sylus?”

Your fingers still, but your hand doesn’t leave his neck. You freeze up like prey. And Caleb has always been your predator. You clear your throat, weakly resume your massage. “That’s Hunter business. I can’t tell you anything about him. You know that, Caleb.”

“I know it’s not Hunter business,” he corrects. “Not entirely.”

You pull back then, and when he looks at you, your brows are drawn tight and low. The look on your face is the same as when you were about to argue with him because you thought he was doing something unfair. He loves the way you get frustrated, the roughness in your voice whenever you fight back. “And who told you that?”

“It doesn’t matter—”

“It does,” you say, voice hard. “Question for a question, right? Because you can’t let go of the same games we played when we were kids. So answer my question.”

What does he say to that? Someone that’s been watching you longer than he has? A corporation that has the resources to know these intimate details about your life? He’s not sure how to answer.

“This is your problem, Caleb. You always think you know best.” You’re fully removed from him, on your knees next to the bathtub. The washcloth drips onto your thighs, below the hem of your shorts. He hopes you don't get cold.  “What are you really asking?”

Another question he feels that he can’t answer outright. Admitting to himself that he loves you is easy. Admitting his jealousy is harder—the way it curls into his lungs, eviscerates him every time the idea of you with another person crosses his mind.

“You want to know if I fucked him.”

He flinches—not used to hearing you speak like this. He was a good example growing up. He made sure of that. “Jeez, pip. You don’t have to be so—”

“What? Blunt? Vulgar?” You roll your eyes and his dick throbs and he feels so gross for wanting you like this. 

He loves it when you’re a little angry at him, when you’re tired of his bullshit and call him on it. (She probably acts like this with him, too.) And there’s the jealousy again, curling, cutting. No one should hear you speak like this but him. He wants to put his thumb in your mouth and make you whine around it. (No. No. Jesus, dude.) 

“I’m an adult, Caleb. I had to grow up when you died,” you say. “I can talk about these things.”

“I know you can.” And he likes it, as much as it makes him feel ill. It’s just—you can talk like that, but he doesn’t want it to be about someone else. He wants it to be about him. “I know. I’m sorry.”

You go back to washing him, and he doesn’t stop you like he should. You soap up the sides of his neck, the wide expanse of his chest. Both shoulders. When you lean over him, he can smell your skin. The same body wash you’ve used since high school. Your sheets used to smell like this when he’d do your laundry. This and your sweat. The way he wants you is the way he’s always wanted you: primal and all-consuming. He wants to prepare himself for you like a meal, feel your teeth dig into his skin. You drag your hand lower, beneath the water. Across his stomach. 

He doesn’t stop you. He doesn’t stop you but he should. 

When your hand brushes against his erection, he hisses through his teeth. He tried not to—really, he did. But—god. Your hand. Your hand. 

You still entirely. You’ve been avoiding eye contact with him, but now you make it. You’re chewing on something in your pretty head, deciding how to move forward. He should have stopped you. He doesn’t want to scare you. Only a little. (It shouldn’t be any at all.) Just enough to see your eyes widen, to see you pull your lower lip between your teeth.

A decision is made. You keep going, slower, maintaining eye contact. Caleb knows he’s leaking ridiculous amounts of precum into the water. He gets a little messy when he thinks of you. As if he’s ever thought about anyone else. And now—you drag the washcloth up the underside of his cock, and he can’t maintain composure. His head falls back, he exhales sharp and hard. You pull another noise from him, a pitchy whine that reminds him of the first time he got off to the thought of you when he was away at school, finally able to voice his desire without you sleeping one room over. Too loud, too desperate. 

He should be thinking harder about this but he can’t. All the blood in his brain has gone straight to his dick, and he tries and fails to stop his hips from bucking as you continue to touch him, the cloth drawn up his inner thigh, then back down towards his hip. You lean over him again and everything is the smell of your skin, the soft brush of your hair against his chest.

Your hand travels upwards, out of the water. Across his chest again. He’s so sensitive that it doesn’t matter that you’re not touching him directly. Every caress feels like your hand wrapped around him, gets him embarrassingly closer to a precipice that he never thought he’d reach with you.

“Is this really all it takes?” you ask, and he can’t tell if you’re amused or pleased or mad at him. He’ll take anything but disappointed. He doesn’t want to be something you don’t want.

You lean over him, bring your face close to his. Your breaths mingle. The taste of mint. You’d already brushed your teeth, ready for bed, before he interrupted your evening with his shit. With his need for you. 

He doesn’t deserve what you’re giving him right now. He’s being selfish again. Taking when he should be giving. He doesn’t even know how you feel about him. Everything is wrong about this. You lean closer. Your foreheads touch. 

“Don’t— oh .” Your hand ghosts the length of his cock again, then traces up the taut lines of his stomach. He’s gonna finish like this. He fucking knows it. He wants to pull you into the bath and feel the line of your body against him, the warmth of you tucked against his skin like a card hidden up a sleeve. Your breath is on his lips. God, you’re so close to him. Wrong. It’s wrong like this. “Hold on, pip,” he says. “Just—wait a sec.”

“Why?” you ask. “Isn’t this what you wanted?”

The way you say that makes him sick. Nothing is simple like he wants it to be. Your voice is mean. It feels like he’s dreaming—one of his bad ones, where he feels guilty afterwards for wanting you. “Not like this,” he says.

“Then how, Caleb?” you ask, and you're frustrated. You're trying to understand but your patience is running thing and he understands. “How do you want me?”

The same way he’s wanted you since he was young. He wants to be your everything. He wants you to want nothing but him. He wants to be your protector, your lover, your home. He wants his life to start and end with you, for everything else to be secondary. His life, a list of wants.

He can’t be any of this for you. Not now. His brain is full of holes, his body doesn’t belong to himself. He’s not even fully human anymore. What happens when everything is taken from him? When he’s a shell of himself? He wants to believe that the ghost that’ll be left inside of his body will still care for you and protect you. But he’ll never know. Once the chip wipes out his love for you, he’ll have died. That won’t be him anymore. Loving you is so intrinsic to everything he is. It’ll just be his body, modified by Ever. His Evol, modified by Ever. His brain, modified by Ever. 

Their weapon. Not even yours. 

“I love you.” His voice breaks on the words. He says it quietly, like a secret you should already know. Something obvious. Not a confession. A reminder—and an explanation. I love you, so of course it has to be different. He feels like you should understand. Don’t you understand?

“But you’ve always loved me,” you say. 

He reaches for you. Your chin tilted by his fingers, pretty eyes looking up at him in question. What you’re asking is always a mystery to him, though it shouldn’t be with the way he knows you. Maybe this is why things have taken so long—you’re both afraid to answer each other’s questions, but you’re also both afraid to ask the right ones. “Is that a bad thing?”

“It just means you don’t want me like—that.” You refuse to meet his eyes while saying this.

How can he tell you how wrong you are without being cruel? Of course he wants you like that. He wants you in any way he can have you. “I’ve always loved you,” he says, “and I’ve always wanted you. But I know it’s not—right. I shouldn’t have felt like that.”

Your hand trails lower again, but nothing has changed on your face. You’re thinking, hard, that cute little line present between your brows that you get when you’re really considering something. “Why shouldn’t you feel like that?”

“I think some people could come up with a lot of reasons,” he says, and he laughs, breathy and nervous, because none of the reasons matter to him.

“I don’t care about what other people think,” you say. “Why do you think that you shouldn’t feel like that?”

His breath comes in sharp—you’ve dropped the washcloth and now it’s your nails on his skin, the scratch of them against his sternum, the tops of his abs. He’s trying to keep as clear a head as possible, but his body responds to you automatically. It’s attuned to you, like his cells are being pulled towards you, through you, attempting to merge just to have you closer. “So much of me is missing,” he tells you.

Your hand stills. Nails become the flat of your hand. Your palm on his chest. His heartbeat racing, then slowing, the chip in his head fighting to keep him calm. “Your arm doesn’t bother me, Caleb.”

“It’s more than that,” he says. “They’ve done a lot of shit to me, pip.” (Language.) But does that even matter anymore? You’re an adult. He has to let you be your own person. He has to let you grow up and tell you the things he doesn’t want to tell you because you deserve to know. He amends himself—says your name so you know he’s addressing you and not a memory. “I don’t think I’m all there anymore. I don’t think what’s in my head is me.”

“I know you,” you say.

“Better than anyone.”

“And I know that you’re still you.”

He can’t help but shake his head. You don’t understand because you don’t want to accept it, and he gets that. He’s a facsimile, but a very good one. That’s what happens when you build inside the shell of something else. When he rests his hand atop yours, holds it closer to his heart, you don’t stop him. For that, he’s grateful. Even if he’s not the version of Caleb you want, you’re at least allowing him this. 

“I wish it was all simple,” you say.

The same thing he’s wished for. He often thinks that the two of you were never meant to be separate beings. Sometimes he feels like he belongs in your head more than he belongs in his own. It’s what he wants the most—to meld into you, to fill all of the parts of you that you’re missing. Loving you is a close second. Possessing you is a dangerously close third.

“I’ve never been with Sylus," you say, and it's quiet but it feels very loud in the tiled walls of your small bathroom. "He’s a close friend. But that’s all.”

“It’s not even my place to ask you about that stuff.”

“It could’ve been,” you say. “You could’ve kissed me that night on the porch. When we were both home from school.”

Of course you'd think about that night. He had tried to protect you, even then. Stop your heart from getting broken when he couldn't tell you all the terrible things that were about to happen. “I could have. I should have.”

“Why didn’t you?”

“I knew things were about to change," he admits. "I thought—maybe after.”

You pause to look at him. Had you known before this moment that he’d been aware that something terrible would come to pass? You won’t forgive him for it, but he would never expect you to. “It’s after,” is your simple reply for much too complicated a situation.

“I didn’t think they’d take so much from me.”

“You’re still you, Caleb." You stare at him for a moment, like you're saying something obvious that he should understand easily. "You are.”

“Not completely.”

“Then I want what’s left.”

“You deserve a lot more.”

“So do you," you say, "but this is what we have. I want what’s left. It should be mine already.”

Of course you'd think that. He loves you. “Come in here with me?”

You hesitate, looking between his exposed knees and his face. Considering something.

“Let me take care of you for a little,” he says.

This decides it. You undress in front of him and he’s rapt. Maybe he should give you some semblance of privacy—but he can’t. He’s imagined this so many times. He’s imagined how your body would feel pressed against his since he saw you half-undressed in the bathroom when he was barely eighteen years old. 

You take off your cozy pajamas, the scant underwear beneath. There could never be anything about you that Caleb doesn’t love—and this vulnerability is something he cherishes more than you know. The fact that you’ll undress in front of him and allow him to watch, to look at your body with every emotion he feels for you: love, desire, care, need.

Need to touch. Need to kiss. He wants to press his lips to every part of you. He wants you hanging from his maw by the neck. He wants his teeth to tear you apart, he wants to taste the way you feel when you’re scared and then assure you that everything’s okay, that he’ll protect you forever. He wants to tell you how beautiful you are but his voice is stuck in his throat along with his breath—everything knocked out of him with the realization that this is really happening.

The water is still warm when you slot yourself between his legs, press your back to his chest. He’s so incredibly hard for you but that’s an afterthought, something he hopes won’t make you uncomfortable. His head is blissfully quiet. He just wants to hold you right now. You sink against him and let out a breath that says finally, here I am. 

Finally, here you are. 

He wraps his arms around you, buries his face in the crook of your neck. Breathes in the scent of your sweat-damp skin. “Whatever’s left of me is always gonna be yours.”

“And I’m always going to be yours," you tell him. A promise. "So it’s mutual. Forever.”

He smiles at that, presses a kiss to your shoulder. He’d like forever with you. He’d love it. “Tell me about your day."

“I should—”

“No. Whatever you need to do, I’ll do it for you later. I just wanna hear about what you’ve been up to all day.”

The washcloth is easily retrieved from the edge of the tub—Caleb’s too tired to lean forward and grab it, so he pulls it into his hand with his Evol. Does the same with your body wash, lathers the cloth until he’s satisfied with the amount. Gently, he cleans you the way you cleaned him. Takes his time caressing every inch of you, holding you against him with his mechanical arm. 

It matters less to him that he can’t feel the way he pulls you against his chest, the way his hand feels splayed out across your stomach. All he’s focused on is his cleansing of your skin, the soft hitch of your breaths, the gentle way you speak to him. 

He listens to you talk about work, about missions and your coworkers and how your gun keeps jamming—which Caleb makes a mental note to check out for you later—then asks questions about the details. He just wants more. He wants to know everything about what you’re doing all the time. It’ll never not be fascinating to him. But his eyes grow heavy—the thirty-eight or so hours he’s gone without sleeping take their toll. 

You notice, turning to look at him. Cradle his face in your hands. “We should get you to bed, hmm?”

“No, I’m listening,” he says. “Promise. Keep telling me. I wanna hear what Simone said.”

You smile, and Caleb’s head blanks. He should ask if he can wash your hair while you’re in here. He should have done things different his whole life so he could’ve gotten to this part a lot sooner. 

“Caleb,” you say, and he knows what you’re asking.

He holds your wrists in his hands. Fragile but not. You’re strong, but he’s undergone more physical experimentation than you. A victory of traumas. He wishes his body was weak so you could break him. He would let you. “I won’t be able to go back to how it was before.”

“I’m not asking you to.”

“Not now,” he says. “Not yet.”

“Not ever.” Your hands mirror as you touch him—trace his sideburns, the angles of his jaw, the backs of his earlobes. He curls his thumbs into the indents of your palms. 

“No matter what happens,” he tells you, “you’re never gonna get rid of me.” And it’s not a promise—it’s a warning. Because if you decide you don’t want him, he would never be able to decide that he doesn’t want you. His life. A list of wants. He doesn’t know what he’d do, but he knows it wouldn’t be good. There’s a part of himself that he can acknowledge but not confront. It’s the part that wants to lock you up, to keep you and tell everyone else you’ve left, that you’ve died, that they shouldn’t worry about looking for you. 

But that’s not even what’s distressing about the whole thing.

It’s the same part of him that wants to buy your clothes, to dress you every day, to pull your socks on and hold your delicate ankles in his too-strong hands, to brush your teeth for you because he wants to make sure you’re getting all the molars at the back, to cook all of your meals for you and straighten out your diet so it’s perfectly balanced, to feed you every bite of food from his fork, to hold your jaw in his hand as you chew to make sure you won’t choke, to carry you to every room and carefully place you on the couch or the bed or the counter or wherever you would like to exist next to him, to wash your hair and take his time keeping it healthy, to lather you up and clean you in the shower and do your skincare for you afterwards—

Something is wrong with him. When he says you won’t get rid of him, he means it. Once he has a taste of you, it’s going to unlock something inside of him that he won’t be able to put back together. And he’ll be so good to you if you never leave him. He’ll take care of you always, and try his best to make sure it’s the way you want to be taken care of. Not the thing he wants. He’ll be as normal as he can be and you can take him anywhere and call him anything and ask him for whatever you want. 

How to put this into words without scaring you? There isn’t a way.

“I wish I could see into your head,” you murmur, freeing one hand from his grasp and tapping a finger against his forehead, right between his eyebrows. 

“You don’t,” he says, because god, you don’t. He’s the exact kind of man that he wants to protect you from. But he’s also the only man that can protect you the right way. “There’s some bad stuff in there.”

You tap him again on the forehead, then on the tip of his nose. “I have a feeling it’s closer to what’s in mine than you think.”

What’s in his head is sick. He will always keep you safe from this. Instead of fighting you, he says, “Be sure you want this.”

And you smile. Allow your hand to sink back into his grip, your wrists once again both secure in his hold. A willing return to his grasp. “I am.”

When you kiss him, it’s the same kind of gentle as your voice. As your hands on his face. He follows your lead—you’re hesitant, clearly inexperienced, but that’s okay. He is too. He’s just thought about it more. He lets you deepen the kiss when you’re ready, only slides his tongue across yours after you’ve done it first. It’s slow, soft, incredibly intimate. Everything he knew a first kiss with you would be.

You’re so careful and precise, so gentle even though you treat everything with such firmness. His arms wrap around you to hold you steady, fingers curling into damp hair—when you moan, the noise small and breathy and completely his, he nearly loses his fucking mind. He moans back desperately, an exchange of sound, a price he pays into your willing mouth. 

You pull back to breathe, forehead pressed against his, hands still cradling the sides of his face. He has to breathe too—hasn’t figured out how to do it while you’re kissing him. It should be easy, but you make him breathless. Lightheaded. Like no air he could take into his lungs would be enough, because nothing could fill him like the feeling of your lips against his. 

He’ll get better at this for you. He’ll figure out the best way to kiss you, the things he can do with his tongue that’ll make you shiver against him. For now, he closes his eyes, catches his breath, leans into your touch. This is what people mean when they talk about heaven. If it was anything else, he wouldn’t want it.

He hasn’t shaved since two mornings ago. He’s sure his skin is scratchy against your palms. He hopes you don’t mind it that much. Can’t stop himself from asking, “What’d I do to earn that?”

“You didn’t need to earn it,” you tell him. “I just wanted to kiss you.”

He smiles and really has to look at you—just to find out whether or not this is happening. He doesn't deserve this. You’re so solid against him, so real even though he’s dreamed about kissing you more than anything else. He wants to give you everything. Wishes he could.

You smile, too—small, your lower lip pulled between your teeth like you’re trying to hide it. You don’t want him to give him a bright smile because you’re worried that he’ll get ahead of himself, get cocky in the way that always annoys you. He knows you too well, and you know him the same. It’s how he’s sure you’re aware that it’s too late for that. He’s already getting ahead of himself. He’s planning to kiss you every day for the rest of his life, and he’s damn sure gonna do whatever he needs to in order to make that happen. “Do I need to earn another one? Nah—I’m guessing you’ll just want to kiss me again.”

“That depends on whether or not you can keep your big mouth shut.”

He grins at you wide, all teeth and confidence. “Whatever you want my mouth to do, I’ll make it happen. Just say the word.”

You roll your eyes, but you’re clearly amused. He loves you like this. Happy. His. “I think I’m gonna make you earn it. Maybe that’ll shut you up.”

He leans forward, traces your jaw with the tip of his nose. Presses a kiss to the spot just below your ear. “I can do that—I’m an earner. Doubt anything’ll shut me up, though.”

“You’re annoying.”

“You like it.”

You hum in response, mirroring his movements—lips across his jaw, the spot under his ear, the column of his neck. You always take things farther because you never doubt yourself when you go for what you want. He’s always admired you for that. When it comes to you, hesitation is something he excels at. He doesn’t want to scare you.

But you don’t seem scared. You’re looking at him like you want to sink your teeth into his neck. And he’d let you. He’d enjoy it, too.

But this can’t be a comfortable position. Sitting between his legs, back pressed hard against the side of the tub because of the lack of space to accommodate you turning to face him. “C’mere,” he says, and puts his hands under your legs. Lifts you, turns you with his Evol until you’re comfortable on top of him, your thighs on either side of his hips. 

He didn’t mean to position you like this—not completely. The thought crossed his mind, about what it would be like to have you on top of him. But he’s good at controlling himself. Always has been around you, something he’s learned. Because he had to.

Maybe he should’ve asked you first. He doesn’t want to scare you. Never wants to scare you. He’s still hard for you and it gets worse when you lean forward, when the length of his cock presses against your stomach, when you kiss him again and this time he can’t remove the thought of what it would feel like while he’s inside you, fucking you slowly, carefully, the way you would maybe want him to.

He would have to control himself. He’s not sure what’ll happen if you ever allow him that—whether or not his thick band of patience and self-control will snap and he’ll live out his fantasies before he can stop himself. He wants to be the only thought in your head. He wants his name to be the only thing you can say. 

Not in a depraved way. Not in a disgusting way. He just wants to be the only thing on your mind ever. That’s one way to make it happen. And if he can take care of you while making that happen—if he can show you why he should be the only man that should ever be allowed to touch you, because he’ll treat you so well, because he’ll learn everything you like so quickly—he’d be happy. 

“You need to sleep. We should get you to bed,” you tell him. Still too close, your body pressed against his deliciously. It feels impossible for him to remove his hands from your hips. The feeling of his fingers digging into soft skin—he could tear you apart. 

He’s getting himself too worked up just thinking about it. You’re right. He should sleep. And he’s allowed to sleep next to you tonight. A blessing. A curse, maybe, considering the fact that there’s gonna be no way for him to take care of himself before you escort him to bed. What will win out, he wonders—his exhaustion, or his need for you?

One is very easy to overcome. The other—well. It’d be a waste of time to try to overcome that.

“Caleb?” you ask. You’re so patient with him sometimes. You never used to be. Is this from before he died, or after? He’s just been enjoying the feeling of his hands on your skin, your breath on his lips, your body flush against his. You tap his forehead twice with a finger, a careful knock. “You fall asleep with your eyes open?”

“They taught me how to do that at the DAA, y’know,” he says, pulling your hand to his mouth. He nips the fingertip you still have extended and he watches your eyes darken, your lips part. “That’s how I got through those dramas you used to make me watch when I’d come home for the summer.”

You roll your eyes and he loves you. “You watched The Duke’s Secret Bride on your own. I saw it in your streaming history.”

“Keeping an eye on me, huh?”

“Like you’re not doing the same.”

How much do you know? A better question: how much do you suspect? He’s careful. Nothing he does to watch over you should be able to get back to you. It’s all protected by the Fleet’s servers, which have been impenetrable long before Caleb took the rank of colonel. He could ask if that would be a bad thing—but he knows you like your independence. Knows that you would ask him to stop.

“I can’t tell if you’re trying to be mysterious by keeping quiet.”

“Is it working?”

“No,” you say.

“Damn,” he says. “Thought I was getting good at it.”

You’re silent for a moment. Thinking something over. “You have to decide,” you finally say.

“What do you mean?”

“Whether you want to go to bed, or…” Your gaze drops to his lips before you look away from him entirely. So cute. You can’t even say it to him. Does he make you nervous? He likes that he does. But he wants you to feel comfortable, too. Safe. “You have to decide,” you repeat, “because right now it feels like I’ve made all the decisions.”

“I want to take things as slow as you need me to,” he tells you.

“I just—it makes me feel like you don’t want... me.” You chance a look at him again. “Or—not in the way that I want you.”

So far removed from the truth, but he understands. It’s hard for him to believe this is happening, too. It seems that any moment now, you could reveal the truth—this is all an elaborate trick you’re playing on him, just to see how far he’d go. How deep his need is for you. 

He pulls you against him, fingers digging into your hips. Lets himself give in, just a little. Drags you up his length, tilts your hips back just enough that he can feel—god, you’re so wet. For him. He hisses out your name through his teeth, breathes out tight and shallow.

Your hands find his shoulders, you press your forehead to his. Say his name back, a call and response. The two of you forever. Together, the way you’ve always been. “More,” you say.

There has never been a request you’ve given Caleb that he’s denied you without good reason. And maybe his control is slipping, but he can find no good reason to deny you this. He digs his fingers into your skin hard enough to bruise—and you will, because he has to consciously think about how much pressure he allows his mechanical arm to apply. He can’t break you. He will never break you. 

Slowly, he pulls you down the length of his cock, then drags your hips back up. You make the smallest, sweetest noise against his mouth—and that’s it. He’s gone.

He’s rutting up against you like an animal, dragging your hips down hard, harder, until your hands go to his hair to pull, to hold on. The slick glide of his cock against your heat, the way your body moves when it’s completely in his control, the way you tilt your hips to chase your own pleasure—he’s not gonna last long. Every touch is like a live wire to his nerves, every breathy noise that comes from you like something out of his most twisted fantasy. He’s gonna fuck this up if things don’t slow down.

He opens his mouth to tell you this and all that comes out is a deep groan, and he needs to stop. He can’t last like this and he wants to take care of you and be a gentleman and so incredibly selfishly he doesn’t want to finish unless it’s inside you.

(Control this.) He has to. Fuck. He tries to even his breathing, slows his pace. Loosens his grip on your hips, and already there are bruises blooming. He was too demanding, took too much of what he wanted. “Fuck, pip, I’m sorry—”

“Caleb,” you say—no, beg, and your grip tightens in his hair. Where he slowed, you pick up your own pace. “I’m so close, please, just—your hands, I need them—”

He’s gripping your hips within his next breath, so tight that it feels cruel. Moving you again, because all he needs to know is that you’re close, too. The amount of times he’s got himself off to the idea of this—just making you feel good in any possible way—he wants to drown in you. He could die like this.

“Yeah, like that, perfect,” you tell him, and he likes the affirmation. Didn’t realize how much he’d like hearing that. “Like that,” you repeat, and one of your hands untwines from the hair at the back of his head, moves to lay flat against his chest. 

Slowly, slowly it creeps up, the curve between your thumb and pointer finger perfectly lining the base of his neck, the smallest amount of pressure on his windpipe. He makes a noise without really thinking, a little higher-pitched, a little desperate—and the way your eyes light up, the way your mouth curves in satisfaction—

He cums hard, his legs tensing up so quickly that they both cramp up. There’s no control of his body—he can’t stop himself from pulling you against him as your hips continue to rock against him—and fuck , he’s too sensitive for this—until you reach your peak, a sharp and vulnerable noise coming from deep within you, unlike anything he’s ever heard. 

You let him hold you. Sink into his embrace the way you’ve done every time he’s ever hugged you. Your body folding into him, tucked away at its edges. He wants all of you. Holding you is a mercy, something he feels he shouldn’t be allowed. Regardless, he closes his eyes, lets himself rest his cheek against your hair. Listens to your deep breaths, 

He says your name, like there’s nothing else to say. It always feels special to call you by your name after calling you something else for so long. It’s intimate to him. He wants to know if you feel the same, but this isn’t the time to ask. “You’re so…”

You pull away from his embrace to press a kiss to the corner of his mouth. “Something good, I hope.”

Perfect. He was going to say perfect. The thought of your hand begging to curl around his neck just solidifies the fact. Is he into that? If it’s you—whatever you want, he’d be into it. He just never expected something so bold from you. “Is this—have you done this with anyone else?”

He shouldn’t have asked. It’s not his place. He knows that if you have, it’d be okay. Even though the thought makes his stomach fall through the fucking floor, he knows that he would have to be okay with it. 

But you shake your head and his exhale is like a holy blessing. It’s like learning to breathe at full capacity after only using half for years. Only him. He’s the only one that’s ever touched you, and the only one that ever will. All his. “It’s okay. If you have, it’s—you can tell me,” he makes himself say, because he is a good person. He has to be a good person for you. If he was truly a good person, he would tell you not to answer his question. To forget he asked.

But again, you shake your head. You can’t say it out loud, which is so incredibly endearing to him. Still, you manage to ask, “Have you?”

Bold in the way you question him, shy in your own answers. He loves you in a way he doesn’t think anyone has loved before. “No,” he says. “You’re the only person I’ve ever wanted to be with.”

Maybe it’s too much—a view into his brain that might scare you. (You don’t want to scare her.) He doesn’t want to scare you. But he’s said it, and that’s that. You’re still here in his lap, your hand was still curved around his neck with intent, you still kissed him first.

“I know,” you tell him, and he understands—you’re not saying that you knew the whole time. You’re saying that you felt the same. That you waited for him, like he waited for you. You had ample opportunity to move on. The guy whose knees he shattered earlier told him about the way the Onychinus leader treats you, with soft touch and genuine care. 

And still you waited, even though his hands could never be that gentle. Even though he’s sure his crimes are on par or worse than this other man who could have claimed you if only you’d let him.

You pull the plug from the bath, run the shower. The both of you clean yourselves off and all he can do is look at you. Even when you’re in pajamas again—his shirt, his shirt—soft and cozy, he just can’t take his eyes off you. The night’s final destination is your bedroom—it’s unspoken, but after that, he’s not sleeping on the couch. He doesn’t think he’ll be able to be far from you ever again. He’s going to have to figure out how to manage being away from you when he could just forget everything and stay close. Just the two of you, his hands on your skin, your lips on his.

When the both of you are settled, lying together in bed, you say, “I always wanted to be your first. I didn’t think I would be.”

“Why would you think that?” he asks, almost affronted even though there are many valid reasons he can think of, even now, that would answer his own question.

You shrug, unable to look at him—not shy, never shy. But still getting comfortable with this kind of vulnerability in his presence. “You’re charming. You know that. And I know there were tons of people that wanted to get with you when you were away at the Academy. And you're—I mean, you know. I don't see why anyone wouldn't want you. You're pretty. And you're—big, and... People like that.”

He has to stop himself from groaning, instead dragging a hand down his face to try to physical push down his reaction. Your voice, saying these things—how long have you thought about him this way? Since you were nineteen, since that almost-kiss? Maybe he hasn’t thought about this more than you. Maybe it’s equal. If that’s the case and he finds out, he’s gonna fuck you into the mattress. He’s gonna lose his entire process of rational thinking. “If you keep saying things like that,” he tells you, and it’s a genuine warning, “it’s gonna be hard for us to go to sleep.”

You smile, amused, as if that was the intended reaction. “Fine. I can be merciful. But I want a kiss.”

Tomorrow morning, he will wake up and things will have changed, but not enough. He will have to report back to the Farspace Fleet as their colonel, and he’ll have to explain his absence to Ever, and the parts of his brain that he’s locked up to keep you safe will suffer without you. He will be a part of Ever’s plans until the day he dies. He will love you until his brain is torn apart by the chip that controls him and there is nothing left but a shell. Something that looks like him but is not. 

Right now, he’s still Caleb. He kisses you deep, slow, his tongue running across the roof of your mouth because he wishes he could exist there, right behind your teeth. He slides one big hand underneath your sleep shirt, tries to feel as much of your skin as possible. 

And who was he ever kidding? He’s not gonna control himself.

He slides your panties down your leg and tastes you for the first time outside of his imagination and this is the only place he ever wants to be. Tongue curling against you, inside of you, wet noises and the sound of your moans, and what did he do to deserve this?

Nothing. It takes a little longer than he'd like for him to make you cum the first time, but then he gets it. The way your back arches when he sucks, the way your legs tremble when he moans against you. He’ll learn everything. And his name, his name, his name, please, Caleb, baby, I want—

But it doesn’t matter what you want right now, because he’s giving you what you need. Worship as absolution. His fingers curling inside you and making you squirm until there are tears in your eyes, until you’re saying no more , but the thing is that Caleb knows you have more for him, and he’s happy to tell you this.

And you do have more for him. You do, and each time your thighs tighten around his head, and your legs shake after a while, a constant tremble, so he’ll hold them for you. Wouldn’t want you getting tired. 

When he loses count—seven? eight?—you finally push him away. Not the little weak nudges you’d given him throughout, but a shove with your full strength behind it, dislodging his head from the cradle of your thighs. He’s so hard for you, but nowhere close to finishing. He doesn’t think he can unless it’s your hands on him, your mouth—no. Maybe he can. Even the thought of that makes something in his stomach twist dangerously, makes his breath halt in his chest.

But there are more important things to think about—you look disappointed. This is the exact opposite of what he wanted. “Too much?” he asks, but he can’t quite get himself to apologize. He knows he won’t really mean it. But there’s also a part of him, ingrained like code, that makes him need to give you what you want. He took too much for himself again. Did what he knew was best for you rather than what you thought would be best.

“I don’t—I can’t handle it after that. I wanted you to—” And you can’t even say it now. All that bluster from earlier, talking about another man fucking you. Or—maybe he misunderstands. Because you say, “I want you,” and it’s clear what you mean but you’re so earnest.

You want him to make love to you. Not to fuck you. Because that would be such a callous way to put what crossing that final boundary would mean to you. But it’s a little out-dated, a little too much to use those words. There’s nothing else to replace them with. “I want you,” you repeat, and everything in him softens for you. His perfect girl. 

“Next time,” he promises, and he means it. He won’t do this to you again until you’ve had what you want. He’ll do his best to be good. To think about how it would feel to be inside of you—divine, he’s sure, and even that thought extends inside of him horribly, pulls tight like something ready to snap—instead of thinking about what’ll be best for you. 

He moves up the bed to kiss you, the lower half of his face soaked. Maybe he should clean himself off first? No. Not with the way you’re looking at him, not with the way you say come here, please . He kisses you with tongue, can’t stop himself from whining a little when he pulls back and sees your face streaked with your own cum.

“You didn’t…” you start. 

“I did,” he said. “Earlier, y’know—when you took advantage of a poor, tired man in your bathtub.”

You snort, roll your eyes, act like you’re annoyed. He could fuck the attitude out of you right now, make you apologize for it. Over and over until he’s satisfied—which, knowing him, would take a long minute. He can always tell when you mean it and when you’re saying sorry just to say sorry. And he’d make you mean it. 

No. You’re too overstimulated for that. And besides, he’s being good. He’s trying so, so hard to be good.

“Get yourself off,” you say. A command. 

His bravado dries up in his throat. The attitude is doing something different to him now. Something worse. “An order?”

“Yeah,” you say, consider something dangerous. “And you can’t use your hands.”

“Oh… my god.” The words are mumbled into the crook of your neck. His eyes are closed. Your voice is fucking incredible. “Do you want me to—how should I—”

“However you want,” you tell him, but he can tell you’re up to something. This is the sound of you when you’re up to something. “But be careful with me. I’m sensitive, remember?”

He wants to be anything but careful with you. You frustrate him to no end and also make him want to smile every second of the day when you play with him like this. He loves being your toy. Christ, that sounds—a little crazy. But that’s always what he’s been for you, so it doesn’t really matter all that much, he figures.

Your hips in his hands, he grinds himself against you. He’s careful to avoid where you’re most sensitive—really just ruts against your hip, your lower stomach, dick straining against his sweats. He has to reach out above your head, his fingers wrapping around one of the wooden slats of your headboard, because otherwise he’ll push you up the bed uncomfortably and he needs to fuck you. No—he needs you to be comfortable. That’s what he meant. His head is spinning and he wishes he wasn’t wearing sweatpants because he wants to feel your skin against him.

They’re going to be ruined but he couldn’t give any less of a fuck. He has to do what you ordered him to do. And even like this—god, you feel so good—he gets close so quickly. His breathing is shallow, labored. He tries to say your name but can’t. His noises are all broken, pitchy, too vulnerable.

The friction of your soft body against the underside of his cock is torture. Your shirt’s ridden up and he has one hand on your thigh and there are already so many bruises, little coin-sized marks from his fingers and mouth that say she belongs to someone . He wants you to do the same. He wants to have more than just scars from childhood that he gained for you. He already belongs to you but he needs it in every way. He wants your teeth to break the delicate skin of his lips and mark him up permanently, so everyone always knows.

He kisses you hard while he rocks his hips against you desperately, like he can tell you this without saying it out loud, and when he nips your bottom lip you return in kind, biting hard just the way he knew you would. Not enough to truly hurt him—but he’ll get you there eventually.

“So good,” you say—put your hands on his shoulders and moan into his ear, dig your fingernails into his shirt. It’s like he’s one step removed from fucking you for real and he thinks you know this, because there’s no real pleasure you could be getting out of this. Apart from the pleasure of seeing him do this for you. Seeing how quickly he unravels even when he’s only able to touch you like this. “So good,” you repeat. “My good boy.”

He cums so fast that it could be a record. Eyes screwed closed, fingers digging into your thigh and the slat of your headboard, nose buried against the crook of your neck. You smell like sweat and body wash and fuck, fuck , he wishes he was inside you, and he rides out the waves of his orgasm against you, dragging his oversensitive cock against your hip. He didn’t even cum this much in the bath—it’s copious, a stupid amount. He could be fucking this into you right now but he has to follow orders. He has to do what you want.

He’s talking shit and he doesn’t even know what he’s saying, just snippets of gonna fuck you so full of my cum next time and so sweet and bet your pussy’s even sweeter and thank you, baby, thank you and thank you for letting me cum and god, fuck, I love you, thank you so much. 

When his breathing has calmed, he realizes he’s putting a little too much of his body weight on you—but you don’t seem to mind. Your hands cradle his head, fingers tracing his hairline. He shivers a little at the touch, at the overwhelming after of probably the best orgasm he’s had in his entire life. 

“I didn’t think you’d like that so much,” you say. Amused, again. When did you get good at getting the upper hand on him like this?

He can’t look at you. There’s a better question he should be asking. Is he into that? And how many times is he gonna ask himself this question today? The real answer is that he thinks he’d be into anything if you were the one doing it. Maybe he has a couple hard nos, but not many. He’s so bent out of shape over you that he could get off to your bare shoulder, or the skin of your ankles between low-rise socks and a pair of jeans. Anything you do is sexy to him. 

He racks his brain for a response that doesn’t feel like giving in. It’s hard with the quiet emptiness that fills his mind, the contentedness of you holding him after letting him do some weirdly depraved shit. “You really have a mouth on you,” is what he settles on.

“Yep,” you say. Nip his earlobe. Jesus—you can’t get him worked up again. You cannot get him worked up again. “Does things like that.”

“Baby, please,” he says. He’s spent entirely. The inside of his sweats is uncomfortably sticky and slick. He needs to fix that and get you both to bed. “Please.”

You laugh. If it wasn’t his favorite sound in the world, he would pinch your cheek, maybe bite you back. Anything to annoy you a little. “Fine,” you say. Admitting to knowing what you were doing. “But let me clean you up.”

Finally, he allows himself to pull away from you. To hold himself up over your body, his face inches from yours. He taps your nose with one long finger, shaking his head. “Nuh-uh. You and those wandering hands. I think it’s best if I take care of that myself.”

“Ugh,” you say, dramatic, and he loves you. “Have it your way. Go clean up alone, I guess.”

“I’ll be thinking of you the whole time,” he promises. Something easy to keep.

You roll your eyes. “You’d better be. Leaving me by myself out here.”

“I’ll be back for you, duh,” he says, and kisses you like it’s his usual. Already a habit he never intends to break. “Can’t just leave you here all messy like this.”

“I don’t ever want you to leave me,” you say—and it’s a little more serious. Your mouth is still set in the small smile you have when you’re amused, but your eyes are devoid of mirth. This is you telling him seriously. I don’t ever want you to leave me, and the again is unspoken but understood by both of you.

“I won’t,” he says, but he’s terrified to make this sound like a promise. Not as easy to keep. “Not if I can help it.”

And you understand that he can’t assure you he’ll be there forever. He sees it in your eyes—something muted and hurt, but not by him. By the circumstance. “You’d better do everything you can.”

For you, he’ll always do this. He’ll claw himself back to life, he’ll tear apart whoever he needs to if it assures his freedom. He’ll work tirelessly to make sure that the only person he belongs to is you. This is what he needs to do now. This is his new command, his new set of orders to follow. “I will,” he says, and then repeats it. “I love you.”

You look at him for a moment, pensive. “In what way?”

“Every way,” he says. “I love you the way I loved you when I was a kid. But also differently. More.”

“More,” you repeat, and he wishes he was more eloquent. You’ve always been the one with the great vocabulary, the penchant for reading books for fun instead of just to figure out how to put together mechanical models or fix plane engines.

“I love you completely.” It’s the only way he can think to put it. “All of you. Everything. And I won’t ever not.”

Finally, you smile. A small thing he doesn’t deserve. “Tell me again,” you say. Troublemaker.

“I love you completely.”

“And you always will.”

He nods. “I always will.”

You take his face in your hands and kiss his cheeks, the corners of his lips. He’s never felt warmth like this. “Then you’re stuck with me,” you tell him, "because I feel the same way.”

And it’s enough for Caleb. It’s more than he deserves, and everything he’s ever wanted. His life. A list. What he’s wanted since he was too young to want it.

Just you, entirely and always.

˚✧ ﾟ.

Life with Caleb is all uncertainties. You knew that this would be the case. You can count on several things: if he can’t see you because of work, he’ll call you whenever he can. He’ll always tell you how much he loves you before he ends these calls. When he comes to see you, it’s always with a gift—a favorite snack, a trinket he saw in Skyhaven that made him think of you, sometimes a handful of blooms he’d picked from the apple trees near his home. 

You press them into bookmarks, encase them in resin. Pretty white blossoms flattened and kept perfect forever, a symbol of how he feels for you. They will outlast the both of you. Long after you’re both dead, the flowers will look exactly as they did when you sat with him on your couch and pulled them out from between pages of your oldest and heaviest book.

You will never be entirely sure that you won’t lose him at some point. You will never be entirely sure that Ever won’t do something terrible to him without his consent. You will never be entirely sure that he’ll come back from the Deepspace Tunnel when he flies off for his weeks-long missions. 

But he always loves you, and you always love him. This is undeniable, non-negotiable. 

He surprises you sometimes, too, when the both of you have time. Dates that are thoughtful and sweet. A weekend away together, when the Fleet can spare him.

In the depth of summer, he takes you out into the country. Tells you to prepare a bag with everything you usually need at home. Two hours from Linkon, a house sits on the edge of its own lake. An older build but obviously well-kept, with wood-panel walls and a wrap-around porch. It’s nothing you would have expected from him, until he takes you to the bathroom and you see the tub. Free-standing, like the one from your childhood home.

“Let me wash your hair,” he says. Asks, really, despite it not being a question. He’d spend the time doing whatever you wanted him to do—this you know. But you love that he asks, that he voices his wants. You love that his wants often involve taking care of you, even if that’s a little selfish.

He knows how to do everything perfectly. You taught him well when you were younger, and he didn’t forget. He never forgets anything you teach him. 

“It’s so pretty like this,” he tells you. Short, he means. Shorter than it was when you were younger. The most stark reminder that this is what has come after. You’re not nineteen anymore. Caleb isn’t at the DAA, so far away from you that sometimes you’d get scared he’d left without saying goodbye. You exist together as these new people you’ve become, love each other as well as you can.

You sit on the porch during sunset, after Caleb insists on drying your hair for you, too. You’re sure his arms are tired, his hands stiff. He doesn’t complain once. There’s a swinging bench, pillowed with a high back. Sitting between Caleb’s legs, you lean back against his chest, let his large body engulf you. He was right when he accused you of loving this. 

Fireflies dot the budding night sky. The forest that surrounds the lake turns dark, blends into the void that hangs above. It’s hard to tell between firefly and star. It’s hard to tell when exactly you knew what Caleb was doing by bringing you here, to this place that replicates your childhood home not in entirety but in a few very specific ways. 

Your childhood was nowhere near this grand, this isolated. You lived in the city. You were lucky to have a porch. You were lucky to have Caleb and you still are. “I love you,” you tell him, in this imperfect replica of the spot where he could have kissed you such a long time ago.

“I know, baby,” he says, presses a kiss to the top of your head. 

You tell him that you love him less than he tells you. You’re scared, sometimes, to still be so vulnerable with him. So much has happened. You’re still in the middle of so much chaos, an indeterminate end guaranteed for the two of you. When you say it to him, he doesn’t say it back—as if to not spook you. He knows your limits. Always, he will be the person that understands your boundaries without you having to say them aloud. 

“So are you going to kiss me or not?” you ask—a little antagonistic on purpose. You’ll thank him for doing this, for bringing you here, but you have to give him a hard time first.

Maybe you’re imagining it, but it’s like you can feel him smile, feel the amusement coming from his body as he holds you. “I dunno, pip. It’s special, being my first kiss and all. I’m nervous.”

“You’re so annoying,” you say, and you turn and pull him to you by the neck of his sweater and you kiss him, the way you should have the last time this happened, nineteen and hopeful. You forgot your own agency. You were scared of it, more accurately. 

There was something there to ruin. The same as the first time you kissed him for real, in your apartment after he came to you exhausted and bleeding. Believing him dead was what showed you that the risk was worth it. Because losing him without letting him knowing your true feelings was the most empty you’d ever felt. You couldn’t deal with that again.

You bite his lower lip—one of his favorite things while kissing you. It never fails to get a reaction, his hands always tightening their grip on you with intent. 

And he does, predictable in a way that drives you crazy. “During my first ever kiss?” he pulls back to ask, and you kiss him again and bite harder.

Exactly what he wanted, you’re sure. He groans deep, breathlessly, whispers your name between breaths. Done with joking, now. His hands pull at the ends of your shirt— his shirt, all you sleep in these days. 

You put your hands atop his. He stops kissing you to look at you in question, brows drawn up high, concern in his eyes. Did I go too far? is always the question on his lips, always the worry that sits in his bones. 

“Caleb…” you say, a soft reprimand. “You're trying to go farther during my first ever kiss?”

He laughs, then squishes your cheeks with one hand, forcing your mouth into a pout. “You think you’re so cute, don’t you.”

You narrow your eyes, your squished pout turning into a squished smile. He loosens his grip, hand instead cupping your chin, tilting your face up to his. “I think you think I’m cute.”

“I know you’re cute,” he says, and he means it. You can tell he does.

“Thank you for doing this,” you say. “You can be a sweetheart when you want to be.”

He wraps his arms around you, pulls you into his embrace. Rubs his chin against the top of your head, something you think he used to do to annoy you but that’s become one of your favorite ways to be touched by him. “Hmm,” he says, pretending to think about it. “Only for you.”

“That’s what I like to hear,” you say, because it’s true. You want him to be sweet only for you, the way you’re sweet only for him.

That’ll be the case until, inevitably, one of you leaves the other. Not by choice. By death or something worse. You wouldn’t leave Caleb for anything else—but you’ve gotten better at thinking less about the future and more about the present. About Caleb’s arms around you, his chin resting on your head, his hands keeping you grounded and steady.

“We should stay here forever,” he says, and you both know that you can’t. Soon you will leave, and life will resume, and the fears you’ll always have will be right back where they always are, sitting like rocks in your lungs. 

But that’s not now.

“I’d love that,” you tell him. Melt into his arms, breathe in the smell of his aftershave and earth-logged night and mineral oil. “Let’s stay here forever.”

[bkgexe]

rotary devotion

caleb (love and deepspace) x reader ✾ part 1/2 ✾ 15k (35k total)

✾ info! “I wish I could see into your head,” you murmur, freeing one hand from his grasp and tapping a finger against his forehead, right between his eyebrows.

“You don’t,” he says, because god, you don’t. He’s the exact kind of man that he wants to protect you from. But he’s also the only man that can protect you right.

✾ tw! yandere-adjacent activities typical of caleb... like he's doing that already and he's not even sorry about it. f!reader referred to w/ gendered language and she/her pronouns.

✾ notes! ohhhh man. this is just an exploration of how they exist together. massively angst with a happy(ish) ending. smut in part two, published now. read on ao3 if u would prefer!!!!

When you were younger, Caleb loved your hair. He would detangle it for you, dry it after a wash day, braid it when you wanted any specific style. He was careful with you always. If he accidentally pulled to the point of pain, he would massage your scalp with his fingers until the ache went away. He would apologize and ask you to forgive him, even though he already knew the forgiveness was assured.

The first thing you do when you get home from Skyhaven is cut it off. 

You wanted to do this when you joined the Hunter Association. You’d been growing your hair out since the Chronorift Catastrophe—most of it had gotten burnt off. As you aged, it grew long and healthy and Caleb was fixated on it, always patting your head, asking to help style it, keeping stray strands out of your face with gentle fingers. But it was long and you needed it out of the way for work, so cutting it was the most obvious thing to do.

And then Caleb died, and it didn’t feel right. To lose him and then cut away the memories of him sitting with you while he took the time to braid it carefully from scalp to ends, of bickering with him and laughing with him and reveling in the feeling of his strong hands turning gentle just for you.

You want to scream. You want to cry for hours and hours. You want to kill him and make sure he’s actually dead, to validate the grief you went through and the grief you’re still experiencing.

When you’re done, the floor around you is carpeted with hair, so much that you can barely see the tiling beneath. It’s just longer than shoulder-length now, enough to tie up so it doesn’t get in your face. You’ve been back home from Skyhaven for maybe an hour. You can still see Caleb on the airway saying goodbye, certain that you hate him for everything he’s done, everything he’s kept from you.

You should hate him. You should. You look at the forgiveness coupon that Caleb slipped into your belongings where you’d set it on your bathroom counter upon getting home. You should, and you sit on the floor in the pile of hair you’ve left behind because you don’t know what else to do.

You should and you can’t. 

You see him again a couple of weeks later and it’s still painful. It’s like seeing a ghost, like you’re hallucinating something you’ve wanted for months. But it’s wrong because it’s real. It’s wrong because it’s not him, somehow, even though it is.

“Pip-squeak—what did you do?” he asks.

You didn’t think you’d run into him here—you’re helping a shopkeeper empty out her store before sale. You were a regular as a child, and you remember her vividly from when you used to coyly ask for a caramel before leaving even though you didn’t have the allowance to pay for it. She usually relented. If she didn’t, Caleb would buy one for you anyway. “Don’t call me that.” 

The nickname is so ridiculous. You’ve always hated it but you hate it even more now, because it’s this new Caleb that’s using it as if he’s anything like your Caleb. He’s a sick imitation at best.

He says your name like this is all a joke, as if you’re just pushing back to push back, as if—surprise!—he’s been fine this whole time and now everything is okay. “Too grown-up for nicknames, huh?” he teases.

You continue your task of packing left-over merchandise into a large box, deciding not to respond. There’s a lump in your throat that’s too thick to swallow around.

“Your hair was so pretty.” He sounds so nostalgic that your brain stutters, your hands stilling for a moment. “Well—still is. Of course you’d look good with any hairstyle,” he says, like that’s the most obvious thing in the world, and he reaches out from where he leans on the counter, watching you, to pull at the ends of your hair.

You flinch back, instinctually moving to push his hand away, but he catches your wrist. You haven’t forgotten the way he held you down in Skyhaven—the things he said. How he wants to keep you, protect you in his odd, twisted way. He managed to hold you completely still without bruising your wrists, and his hold is very similar to what it was then. Firm and unyielding, but not punishing. Not yet. There’s an edge in his eyes that tells you it could get there.

Here is something terrible and secret: as much as you hate him for leaving you, for treating you the way he has since he’s been back in your life, there is some small, rotten part of you that loves it. When you confirmed that he was alive—that he was alive , and you grieved him for so long —your instinct told you to hold him in your jaws and bite down hard. To make sure he could never leave you again without leaving a sizable chunk of flesh behind. It’s a relief to see that mirrored in him. It makes you feel less insane. 

You’ve loved Caleb for your whole life. Of course you have. He’s been everything to you.

You loved him every time he asked you to pretend to be his girlfriend so he could complete his studies in peace. You loved him past his graduation, where you’d kissed his cheek in front of the entirety of his graduating class to stake some sort of claim on him. You loved him when he worked for the DAA, when his hours were so frantically busy that you barely got a phone call from him once a week. You loved him when he was on leave, when he came to visit you and Gran and smiled so brightly at you despite how exhausted you could tell he was. You loved him when he died. Past that. You loved him when he reappeared in your life, when he refused to explain how he survived, why he hadn’t contacted you, the terms of his new employment with a shady agency.

Being touched by him now is hard because it makes you remember this. It makes you remember the way you feel and the way you should feel.

His grip on you loosens, that odd gleam in his eye petering down to only a spark. His thumb, careful and soft, swipes across the inside of your wrist. You pull away before he can realize he’s given you goosebumps. “Why’d you cut your hair?” he asks.

You resume packing the box in front of you, and you hate him. You hate him. You hate him. You remind yourself of this until it feels true. “What are you doing in Linkon?”

“You wanna do a question for a question?” he asks. “That was the only way I was ever able to get any info out of you when we were kids.”

“We’re not kids anymore,” you say, but what you really want to tell him is to stop reminiscing all the time. Stop bringing up the fact that you shared a childhood, that he was the most important person in your life before he died. You had just figured out how to live without him. Only some days. Only some hours, more often than not. You could go a little without thinking about him before you remembered and that same awful feeling of emptiness crept back in. “I cut my hair because it needed to be cut.”

In your peripherals, you see him lean further across the counter. His arms are crossed, fingers of one hand drumming against a toned bicep—he’s still wearing those god-awful sleeveless shirts, even now, as if nothing has changed—and you remember how working out with him had gotten more distracting as you’d gotten older, how you couldn’t stop noticing the way the rest of his body finally began to match his height, how you used to rest your hands on his shoulders before he gave you piggy-back rides and how those same shoulders used to be much less wide than they are now. 

“You seem to be awful deep in thought,” Caleb says, and your hands hadn’t been moving this whole time. “Something you wanna share?”

“You didn’t answer my question.” Your ears are burning. You hate that he makes you feel like a kid, like you’ve done something wrong.

“Oh, so we are playing,” he says, and you don’t have to look to know the grin he’s wearing. You know him like the feeling of your tongue against the roof of your mouth. You know him the way you know a shirt you’ve been wearing beneath a sweater all day. “Would it be a bad thing if I said that I came just to see you?”

“How did you know where I’d be?”

He clicks his tongue at you. “Nuh-uh. You have to answer my question first. That’s how it works.”

You give up on the box you’re packing and stand, turn to look at him. You hadn’t realized how little room was behind the counter. It seemed like such a large place when you were little, the glass jars filled with candies bigger than your whole body. Now, you pick the jars up with ease. Now, the space between you and Caleb is basically infinitesimal with the way he leans towards you, coaxed in like a moon.

You consider his question. “It’s a waste of a trip,” you tell him. “I’m busy. I can’t babysit you today.” You don’t say it’s a bad thing that he came to visit because you’d be lying. Or, in reality: it puts into perspective that it’s actually a terrible thing, because it makes you realize just how badly you want to see him.

“You don’t have to worry about babysitting me. I’m pretty self-sufficient,” he says. “Besides, I’m here to worry about you . Don’t they say that people only cut their hair this dramatically if they’re going through a crisis?” He eyes your hair, fingers curling against his bicep as if to stop himself from reaching out again. To stop himself from wanting to touch. From wanting at all.

Maybe that’s wishful thinking, but you’ve wished for much worse in regards to him. You’ve wanted him to want a lot more from you. “No crisis here,” you tell him, your voice betraying you in its hollowness. “You can go back to Skyhaven.” 

There’s frustration beneath his veneer of good humor. You’ve always been good at pushing Caleb’s buttons—he makes it a competitive sport to push yours. But the difference between the two of you is that he likes when you push his buttons. You’re not doing that right now. You’re not playing. You know from experience that he hates it when you refuse to engage. “What do you want me to do, pip?” The question is exasperated. Wheedling. Genuine, beneath that.

“Do not,” you repeat, voice hard like a coin, “call me that.” You cross your arms, staring a hole into the wooden counter. You hate the fucking nickname. Looking at him is hard. His favorite color is red and you hate making him sad. “And you didn’t answer my question. How did you know I’d be here?”

He shrugs, but now it’s him that won’t meet your eyes. “I have notifications for the neighborhood. I saw the post about this place shutting down and asking for volunteers to help. I figured you’d respond to it.”

It feels too neat. Too simple. You know he’s no longer a stranger to lying to you. But you want to believe him so, so badly—and truly, smothered under layers of common sense, you know that if it was something a little worse, you wouldn’t even mind. If he was keeping tabs on you. The thought puts electricity under your skin, makes you feel heavy the way you did when Caleb used his Evol to keep you in place back in Skyhaven. 

“Answer mine now?” It seems like he didn’t want that to be a question, but something in him is a little broken, a little loose. He can be demanding. You’ve seen it firsthand. But in this scenario at least, he’s aware that you can deny him what he wants. “What do you want me to do?”

“You used to tell me you’d never lie to me,” you say. “You promised me.”

“I’m not lying to you.”

“You’re not telling me the whole truth.”

“I’m protecting you,” he says, and the emotion behind those words is so emphatic that you get that heavy feeling in your stomach like you want to cry but can’t. It’s the way you felt the entire time you were in Skyhaven, reeling from the reveal that Caleb had never died. He reaches across the counter, forearm resting on the varnished wood, hand hanging off the edge as if waiting for you to catch it. “You know I’d tell you everything if I could.”

You don’t know that. You would have taken him at his word a year ago. Now, you’re not so sure. “If you’re not going to tell me what I want to know, then at least help me finish packing everything up.”

He nods and steps back from the counter. Gets this complicated look behind his eyes, the same look he used to get when you got older and told him you didn’t want to hang out with him as much. It wasn’t true—you just wanted him to prove how badly he wanted to spend time with you. “As you wish,” he says, back to grinning. The expression is boyish, charming, nothing like the person he was a few moments ago when he claimed to be protecting you. The sudden change gives you whiplash. 

There’s a stack of unfolded boxes leaning against the wall behind him, and he does as you ask—picks one up, folds and tapes the bottom, begins to pack up merchandise. There is only the sound of both of you at work for a few minutes, until Caleb clears his throat. “One more question.”

You try to bite back your sigh and fail massively. “Fine. What.”

“Did you think about me? When I was away?”

Your hands start shaking almost immediately. It’s all anger, all frustration and rage and a deep, cloying sadness that feels like his fingers against your scalp, that feels like him whispering sorry and meaning it. A summer night: you’re nineteen and Caleb is carefully taking apart your long braids during sunset on the porch at Gran’s house, fireflies dotting the sky, the smell of a bonfire and his sweat from playing basketball with his friends from the neighborhood, and it was the first time you ever wanted to kiss him. You felt so guilty, then. You feel the same way now. “Away,” you repeat.

He has stilled entirely. He’s that same boy that sat with you that night and noticed you looking at his lips when he got a little too close, who looked at yours right back, whose grip tightened on your hair enough to let you know that there was something there like want, even though you were never fully sure. He’s that same boy grown up, and at the same time he’s not . But he reacts like that boy would have—his face falls, and he knows he used the wrong words, and he opens his mouth because he always has something to say to fix a situation, to make you feel better.

But you don’t let him speak. “Caleb, you were dead . Do you understand that?”

“I—”

“Look at me,” you say, “and tell me that there is any possible way you could understand what I went through.”

He doesn’t speak.

“You were in Skyhaven becoming a colonel. I was…” You were reeling from the loss of your best friend. The man you quietly loved. You went to work every day and you fought Wanderers and took on missions but you weren’t really there . You weren’t awake. Everything was a dream, something you’d eventually wake up from, something you’d tell Caleb about after you went to his room to curl up in his arms. And he would reassure you, I’m not dead, I’m right here, I’m not going anywhere but you can still hold onto me tight if it makes you feel better , and you’d fall back asleep and never dream about this terrible reality again. 

“Of course I thought about you,” you say, and you don’t want to be telling him this. He doesn’t deserve to hear it.

He says your name very quietly, like an apology.

You can’t look at him. Your hands are still shaking. “You need to—I think you need to leave.”

He hesitates for a moment, seemingly torn between moving towards you to comfort you and keeping his distance because he knows that’s what you need. He’s so easy to read. He’s done the same thing since childhood, his protective instincts warring with logical reason. He settles on quietly asking, “Are you sure?”

“Yes,” you spit, the word a little more venomous than you mean it to be.

“I’m sorry,” he says. You know he means it. He always means it.

You nod. You can’t say anything else or you’re going to break. All you want is for him to hold you right now because nothing has ever calmed you down like his arms wrapped around you, his face in your hair, his big hands curling around your sides. 

He leaves. You sit there for a moment with the weight of his absence, and then you get back to work as if nothing happened. The same thing you’ve done every morning since he died.

˚✧ ﾟ.

The thing you don’t understand is that he really is sorry. Truly, completely, wholly.

When he woke up after the explosion, you were the first thing he thought of. The blood on your sleeve—how did that get there? How did you manage to get hurt when he was looking away for less than a minute? And why were you lying to him about it? He wouldn’t look away again. He wouldn’t let you out of his sight.

And then he felt the pain, and he wasn’t able to think about much else.

He sits in his office. There’s a small picture of you on his desk—now that he’s a colonel and he’s allowed personal effects at work—that he’s had for years. Summer, high school, when he had just graduated and you were about to be a sophomore. You in a pretty yellow dress he’d bought you with his allowance, lace at the neck. Too pretty for you to wear with anyone but him. He’d made you promise him. Only for special occasions with Gran or times when he came back to visit. The bottom right corner is notably matte against the gloss of the rest of the photo, faded from all the times he used to pull it out of his wallet just to look, stroking his thumb across the ruffled material of the knee-length skirt.

You’re at home. He has only one tab up on his computer that’s not Fleet business—the CCTV stream from the camera across from your apartment building. He made sure you got home safe, and now he’s just monitoring. Making sure no one shady shows up. 

You haven’t called or texted him since the last time he saw you, and he doesn’t want to text first to pressure you into coming back to him before you’re ready. He knows that you’re dealing with a lot. Knows that him coming back was hard on you. He’ll let you have the space you need. He just wants to make sure you’re safe.

And it’s not as if he’s watching you all hours of the day. He’s being reasonable. He just makes sure you get to work safe, get back home okay. Checks the messages you send to your colleagues with your post-battle reports to make sure you haven’t been hurt. Really, the messages shouldn’t be sent over an unprotected server, even if the documents themselves are highly encrypted. The Hunter Association should expect people to intercept and decrypt their documents if they’re going to operate with such low security standards.

He doesn’t look at anything personal, obviously. Doesn’t check your messages with other people, even though he sees a lot of suspiciously male names in your inbox. Doesn’t go through your drafts on any social media, even though he could. He wants you to have your privacy. (She would be so scared of you if she knew about this.) He doesn’t want to scare you.

Waiting is difficult. Especially when you post something for the anniversary of Gran’s death and don’t mention him. He understands, though—it’s complicated, now that you know he’s alive.

Gran wasn’t supposed to die that way. It wasn’t how the plan was put to him. It would have been later, when you’d gone back to the Academy, when he was at the DAA. You weren’t supposed to see it, and he certainly wasn’t supposed to get caught in the crossfire.

For a long time, he was so angry that Ever changed the plan. That they [                                    ]. [                                                         ] the trauma it must have inflicted upon you. [                                                                                          ] to help you, but [                                                                                                   ]. 

They had their reasons, he guesses. If you thought he was dead, if he wasn’t allowed to contact you, things would go smoother. He would’ve appreciated some heads up, but that’s not how things shook out. They needed Caleb to uphold his end of the bargain as quickly as possible. Of course, they’d let him see you again—he’d just have to reach a certain rank within the Farspace Fleet first. Attain a position of power so undeniable that the only people who could control him would be the very people that put him on this path. Living under Ever’s thumb.

Whatever they needed him to do he would do. Because you were going to die, and they were the only ones who could fix you.

The position itself doesn’t matter to him. He never cared about being in power. People usually do what he asks regardless. There’s a language to the way people move through the world—they look up to certain personalities, react well to certain stimuli. You used to call it charisma. Caleb would call it something worse, but you had always been the one to see him in a more positive light. 

He didn’t care that they needed him to do whatever was necessary to climb the ranks of the Farspace Fleet, which he did with brutal and vicious speed. He didn’t care when they made him [                                                                                                        ]. He didn’t care that they replaced his arm with cold metal, that they put a chip in his brain that steadily made him lose parts of himself that were deemed too caustic, too empathetic. 

Sometimes, though, he wonders. What’ll be left of him in a year? Five years? He knows there’s a lot missing, things he’ll never get back. He knows that’s the point of the chip. A perfect weapon can’t be appealed to like a human can. 

But if he’s going to be a weapon, he wants to be yours. He seals parts of himself away, constantly using his Evol to protect his brain against Ever’s technology. They don’t know he’s doing it, he doesn’t think. He’ll become whatever they need him to be—but he’ll never become something that could hurt you. He doesn’t care about anything but you. 

He didn’t care that Ever needed to tear him apart physically to turn him into what he is now, and he didn’t care that they wanted Gran dead. He was well aware that the two of you were little more than scapegoats for her, her guilt assuaged by your upbringing. She was the reason you were going to die, anyway. The experiments she and her group of scientists performed to augment the aether core in your heart did something unalterable, nigh impossible to fix. You’re a star on the edge of implosion, ready to rip itself apart with its own terrible power.

Your heart will give out in the next ten years, they told him, unless the aether core within is stabilized. Ever had the only scientists, the only doctors that could help you. They just needed a weapon in return. 

And Josephine hadn’t only created you, the angel that you are.

Sometimes he considers what he might have been like if he’d grown up unaltered by Gran’s experiments. If he’d have been able to crush a man’s heart, leaving no external wounds behind. If he’d have had the ability to flatten a spaceship in orbit. If his body would have been built to withstand the kind of G-force that could fatally pressurize the organs of a weaker man. 

Would you have liked him like that? Physically smaller, altogether weaker? (She only deserves the best. You have to be perfect for her.) Do his looks matter to you? Do you like him now, as he is? When other boys, looked at you at school, he [                                                                                          ]. [                                                               ] wouldn’t hurt them—for you. You wouldn’t want him to. But [                                                                                                                                           ]. He would walk you home and you would put your hand in his and he would always think: so beautiful. Of course he would protect you for the rest of his life. 

He sees the light in your apartment go on. Your bedroom, he thinks, but he really tries his best not to look. He wants to learn the layout of your apartment on your terms, when you invite him there yourself.

The report he needs to finish before he leaves the office sits in the same state it has for the past twenty minutes. He should finish it. He should go home, where he doesn’t have access to you like this. Where he can’t go through official channels and use the power he clawed into his own hands to assure your safety.

Because you wouldn’t like it. He knows you wouldn’t. (You’re going to scare her.) He should finish this report and go home and leave you to whatever it is you’re doing with the lights on in your bedroom this late. There’s a car outside the building, one he didn’t see pull up while he was zoned out, thinking about you. And now you’re awake, the light on in your bedroom. Potentially with someone else.

[                         ] your [                                                                 ]. You [                                                                                     ] your home [                                                                       ]. [                                                                   ]. [                                                                                                                 ]. [                                                                                                    ] treat you like you deserve. [                                                                                                                                                     ]. [                                                                                              ]. [                                                                 ] yours. Just yours. [                                                                                                                                                                        ]. [                                                 ] because you were pretty when you were younger but now you’ve grown into the kind of beauty he wants to feel on his tongue, and if [                                                                                                                                      ].

He’s on his knees on the floor of his office, lungs burning. His metal hand has rent a chunk of splintered wood from his desk. Breathe. He knows. This is what he has to do. Slowly, deep. Until he can feel the air touching the bottom of his lungs. He brings a gloved hand to his face, wipes away tears. This always happens when the neurons are burnt away. It’s an autonomic reaction, the way eyes water when the nose is hit hard enough. 

Sometimes the memories come back. Usually they don’t. Either way, he always feels a sort of emptiness in his head, a heavy weight of nothingness that will always remind him that he has masters he must answer to.

When his breathing evens out, he stands. Clears his throat. Places the jagged piece of wood torn from his desk on top of the void left in its absence, as if he could slide it back into place. As if his mistakes could be fixed that easily. 

His phone rings. He considers not even checking who’s calling him, but old habits are hard to quit. And he’s glad he listens to his gut—because your face is on his screen. The reason for the habit. His contact picture for you is from his graduation, when you’d worn the yellow dress he bought you and he nearly lost his mind watching other people notice you in it. (You have to keep her away from men that stare too much.) You’re standing next to Caleb, your arm looped through his, his uniform hat on your head. Looking up at him, smiling. And the way he’s looking down at you—he often doubts that there’s any way the people around the two of you could have been blind to his feelings. He wore them plain, looked at you like there was nothing more special in the universe. Because there isn’t.

He’s spent a long time in the Deepspace Tunnel. He knows the ins and outs of this universe better than many others. Nothing is as beautiful or precious as you. And you’re calling him after weeks of radio silence.

No one else is at your apartment. Just you. Calling him.

It doesn’t matter that parts of Caleb are being cleaved away like rotten meat. It doesn’t matter that he’s been stressed, barely sleeping, staying at the office much too late to keep an eye on you. It doesn’t matter that you needed so much more space than he thought you would. 

You’re coming back to him. He’ll take whatever pieces you allow him to have. Eventually, all of them will fall back into place—with him, where every part of you belongs.

˚✧ ﾟ.

When Caleb was at the DAA, you would call him when you had nightmares. You used to get them a lot—regular stress from everyday life compounded with the PTSD from the Chronorift Catastrophe. When your grandmother sent you to a therapist and you were diagnosed, you always secretly believed they were lying. Sure, your entire body locked up during thunderstorms because the cacophonous sounds reminded you of a Wanderer’s roar, and sure, you sometimes couldn’t feel comfortable in crowded places because of the increased vulnerability to attack, but those were regular anxieties that everyone had. They must be.

When Caleb left for Skyhaven, you realized how right the therapist was. Caleb’s familiarity granted you a sort of security blanket that kept you from the worst of your trauma, and you hadn’t realized that. You hadn’t understood how necessary it was to you that he was there, just one room over, in case you needed to sleep in his bed next to him when you were scared. Without him at home, things got exponentially worse.

You woke up one night heaving, sobbing at the memory of it all. At the feeling of your own broken bones, the sight of scattered limbs and the sound of screaming—the sound of burning. You’d never known that burning could be so loud. 

Calling Caleb was instinct, even though he was at the DAA. He had an exam the next day. You felt awful. But he stayed on the phone with you until you could breathe normally, until the tears stopped. He offered to fly home to be with you if you needed him, despite the fact that he was in no way allowed to do that.

And you had needed him, but you knew there were limits. You couldn’t need him right by your side forever. There was going to be a point where you would have to let him go. And you’d thought, then, that you would one day reach that point. That it wouldn’t hurt. That it would be logical and reasonable and your heart would allow you to follow the logic and reason as it usually did.

But things were different with Caleb. Logic and reason never won out. It was always feeling, instinct. 

This nightmare is different. It’s Caleb right before the explosion, looking at you and telling you that he isn’t going to cover for you anymore. The blood on your sleeve, your wrist held in one big hand, like when you were kids. Except you’re not both coming home from the store, like you were in real life. It’s you and he on the porch after he undid your braids, after you turned and looked at his lips for too long and he stared back. It’s after he let himself hold your face gently, as if he could want the same thing you did. What’s going through your head, baby? he asked. The first time he ever called you that. You were thinking about him kissing you.

But he didn’t. He didn’t kiss you then because he didn’t want to. And then you both went inside.

In the dream, it’s you in that house with them. It’s the explosion sending Caleb’s body flailing back, completely aflame, hitting the wall of the house loud enough to crack most of the bones in his body. It’s your name croaked out, hoarse and broken, by the remains of his throat. And the sound of burning that’s a constant in your memories. You know it the way you know a song you've heard too many times. An earworm, your Grandma used to call them. Burning, burning, burning.

Your phone is in your hands and dialing before you’re fully conscious, realizing it’s too late to undo what you’ve just done. He picks up on the second ring, says your name confused, his voice too close to the way it sounded in your dream for comfort.

“Caleb?” you ask, and it’s a plea and a question and something so much more than that. 

“What’s wrong?” he asks, the confusion stripped from his voice when he realizes you’re calling for something important, that you’re calling in the middle of the longest silence there has ever been between you two barring the absence after his death.

It doesn’t matter what Caleb he is right now—yours, or this new, strange man you feel so distant from—it’s still somehow him. “I had a nightmare,” you say, but you can hear the receding tide of panic that still steals its way into your breathing. “Can you talk to me? I know it's... it's childish. For me to ask.”

“It's not childish. We can talk,” he says, because he always makes time for you. “Or—you know what? Give me twenty minutes. I can fly down there. We can stay on the phone.”

There are about sixty airspace regulations that would make it extremely illegal and impossible for him to fly his personal plane down to Linkon and park anywhere near your apartment. And yet, for a moment, the thought tempts you. “No, you don’t have to do that. Please, just—talk to me. About anything.”

“You know I’m good at that,” he says. You hear him lean back in a chair and you wonder what part of his house he’s in. Whether you woke him from sleep or not. “I was actually just thinking about when I graduated from the DAA. You remember that?”

“It wasn’t that long ago,” you tell him.

“You have a famously bad memory, pip.”

“Remember when I called you dirt-boy when we were kids because you couldn’t stop getting food on your shirt every time you ate?” you ask. “That’s still very vivid. I can go back to doing that, if you want to carry on with the nicknames.”

“There it is. Second only to the famously bad memory: the famously bad attitude,” he teases, and he doesn’t have to be here for you to see the curve of his smile, the way his eyebrows quirk upwards in delight, the way his whole face lights up when he’s having a good time talking to you. “Guess even a rude awakening can’t dull your tongue.”

You see: Caleb’s body, the house burning, blood and ash on your hands. His hands on your face. The first time he called you baby. “I guess not.”

The line is quiet for a moment. You wonder if, in the weeks of silence, he’s been laying in the bed where you slept during your brief stay at his home. You wonder if he’s washed the sheets, whether or not they smell like you. “It was a pretty bad one, huh?”

“They’re all bad,” you say.

He’s quiet for a moment. You hear the shifting of clothes, a door opening and closing. “I’m coming down there. If I’m on the phone it’ll take twenty. If I’m off I can make it in fifteen. Can you be patient for me?”

“Caleb—it’s not a good idea. You know it’ll be a pain.”

He chuckles, brushing it off. Endless confidence. “Nothing’s a big enough pain to stop me when you’re involved,” he says. “Besides, the colonel gets some privileges.”

“And he’s going to use them to come see me after I have a nightmare?”

“What else would I use them for?” he asks—and he sounds so achingly sincere, like there’s nothing else he could think to do with his ability to bend the rules, to slightly abuse his power. “Fifteen minutes. I promise.”

He makes it in thirteen.

You meet him in the living room after you hear him let himself inside. He must still have the spare key you'd given him when you'd first reunited, before the questions started creeping in. When he pulls you to his chest, you follow automatically. A big hand cradles your head, fingers curling into your hair. His arms are so firm around you, just like they always used to be—he has a solidity to him that can’t be denied, a strength he carries in every line of his body. He’s in his uniform, strangely enough. 

You wrap your arms around him, fingers tugging at the starched material of his long coat. You want to bunch it up in your hands, stretch it out, leave an undeniable mark that he came here, tonight, to comfort you, just like he would have when he was at school and you still lived with your grandmother. He even smells the same—like worn leather and mineral oil from maintaining his plane’s engines and sharp, clean aftershave.

He rests the side of his face against the crown of your head, breathes in deep. You wonder if you smell the same too, just how he remembers. You wonder if you can both pretend that nothing has changed, if you could let him back into your life and forgive the time he spent away from you and overlook his lies and everything else he’s done to you since returning that hasn’t sat right. His fingers tug at the newly short strands of your hair—the only thing that truly ruins the mirage of your perfect, happy life with Caleb. 

Things have changed. They always will. You pull away from him.

He still keeps you in his arms, giving you distance but only so much. He gets more reluctant to allow space the further you pull away. “Thanks for hanging in there for me,” he says.

You nod because you don’t want to acknowledge out loud that you’ve done anything for him. It doesn’t matter whether he showed up or not. You would still be here, awake, thinking about things you wish you could forget. Your hand fists the material of his coat, tugging its starched lines into a wrinkled mess. “I hate that you’re wearing this.”

Without a word, he steps back from you, takes his coat off and throws it across the back of your couch. The metal armband, the badges and chains of rank, the embroidered sigil of the Fleet—all cast aside to reveal the man underneath. Caleb, in a dress shirt and slacks and tall boots. Caleb as he could have been if he’d stayed with the DAA, coming home to you after a long day at his normal job that he loved so passionately.

Not that he’d be coming home to you. It’s an odd way for your brain to put it. But the thought sticks there, push-pinned to the way you currently feel about him. Warm at his insistence on being there for you. Relieved that he’s alive, as if after the last time you saw him the universe would fess up to its tricks, reveal that it was all one long hallucination, and the Caleb you knew is still buried in the graveyard where you left him. The pieces of him that they were able to find.

Parts of him are still there. Buried, even now. Sometimes you don’t recognize the man in front of you. 

He lifts a hand to your face and you lean into his touch—it’s instinctual. Something you’ve done a million times. He takes this as permission to get closer to you again, to wrap you up in his arms, and this time you give in completely. This time it’s just your Caleb, the Caleb you love so dearly, protecting you from your bad dreams. 

“Let’s sit you down on the couch and I’ll make you some tea,” he says, a gloved hand cradling the back of your head. “That sound okay?”

You hate the layers keeping him away from you. You pull away from him, take his hand in yours and peel his glove off. Make him give you his other hand, do the same to that one. Then you just hold them, your palms against the backs of his hands, his fingers slightly outstretched, as if allowing you to scrutinize fully. He still has calluses from lifting weights, from handling guns so frequently. You curl his fingers and look at his nails, all uniformly cut, cuticles slightly overgrown but healthy. The same scars from growing up with him: a puckered circle on the knuckle of his right thumb from a nasty fall on the basketball court, a long line down his left ring finger from knocking the absolute daylights out of a kid that tore out a chunk of your hair on the playground.

It had been your stake on him. The finger where most people wore jewelry to state that they belonged to someone else. You had done him one better, despite the fact that his actions were his own. A scar instead of a ring. A claim that couldn’t be taken off and hidden in a drawer somewhere.

“I want to be in the kitchen with you,” you tell him. If you say it quietly, you think he maybe won’t hear the slight panic at the idea of being apart from him right now. 

He smiles, the expression quieter than usual but just as effusive. “We can make that happen,” he says, and before you can stop him, he loops an arm beneath your thighs and lifts you, makes you wrap your arms around his neck in surprise. He must have used his Evol to make it so easy, but you didn’t even sense it. “My tea service comes with complimentary delivery. And if I’m not delivering the tea to you, I guess I’ll have to deliver you to the kitchen.”

You let him carry you. Play with the ends of his hair, where it’s slightly longer in the back. He places you on the kitchen counter next to the electric kettle and gets to work. He’s never been to your apartment before, but there are things he intuits easily. The fact that you’d still have an electric kettle, like you used to at Grandma’s. The fact that your tea is kept in the cupboard above the sink. He narrows his eyes, tentatively points to the cupboard next to the fridge before asking, “...mugs?” And he’s right, because that’s where they used to be at home, too.

Moving out was hard—another layer of familiarity stripped away, another safety blanket removed from the pile. You tried to keep things as close to normal for you as possible, as if you could turn this new, unfamiliar apartment into a simulacrum of the house in which you grew up.

None of it brought Caleb back, which is what you’d really wanted. But now here he is. Making tea for you again, like he used to when you were younger. Carrying you around like nothing’s changed.

When the tea is done, it’s nearly two in the morning. You know how military organizations work—know how early he’ll have to be back at it tomorrow morning. You’ve got it bad, too, but at least you’re home. He hands you the steaming cup—chamomile, because maybe it’ll help you fit a good night’s sleep into a couple hours —and finally allows himself to relax somewhat. Stands in front of you and takes off his tie, the metal ring that fits under his collar. Undoes the first two buttons of his shirt.

You look. The edge of his collar bones, the divot in between, the long line of his throat. Steam touches your face. There was a point where you stopped being able to look away from him like this. After that moment on the porch, your first vacation from the Hunter Academy. Caleb’s hands on your face. What’s going through your head, baby? You wish it hadn’t been a part of your nightmare. Even though he didn’t kiss you—made it clear that he didn’t think of you like that—you still look back on that memory fondly.

The closest you’ve ever gotten to what you want. 

Your skin feels hot. Your eyes dart upwards to his and he’s seen you looking. Something dances in his gaze—mirth, maybe, though it’s hard to tell with him. It could be something darker. You used to be able to read him like your favorite book, the words etched into your brain so deeply that you barely needed light to follow along the page. 

He gets closer and your breath shallows, stops. Puts his big hands against the countertop on either side of you, leans in gently. Still tall enough that he’s looking down at you. “Take a sip,” he tells you. “I wanna know if it needs anything else.”

You’re sure it’s perfect. He’s made your tea for decades now, knows how picky you are about brewing time and sugar ratio. You do what he asks regardless, bitter and sweet crossing paths on your tongue. There were nights like this where he would make you tea and you would drink it and cling to him after, not content to go to sleep unless it would be by his side. You’re so close to him that you can imagine yourself feeling the heat of his body, as if it’s unconsciously radiating outwards to comfort you. To wrap you up, keep you safe. You finish about half the cup before saying, “It’s good.”

“Sure you don’t want anything else?” he asks. When his voice gets quiet like this, it’s always a little more nasal, a little more hoarse. You used to find it endearing before you got older and started feeling something entirely different deep in your gut whenever he spoke this way. “The name of the tea service is misleading. I can do food, too. Massage, if your shoulders are stiff. Just tell me what you need and I’ll do it.”

What you need is for him to stay. Sleep next to you, like he used to when you were both kids. But maybe—more than that. When he talks to you like this, acts this way with you—it’s confusing. You swallow audibly, nervous, not willing to think about why you’re feeling so on edge this close to him, trapped on all sides. “Don’t you have work pretty early tomorrow?”

“Why?” he asks. “Do you need me to stay?”

Of course he knows. Just like he was your favorite book, you’ve always been his. He probably knew that you wanted him to stay from the second he got here—from the second he answered your call. But he wasn’t going to do anything about it until you asked. Giving you control, in a slight way, even though he already knew how this evening was going to pan out. 

“No,” you say. You both know you’re lying. But since he died, you’ve dealt with your nightmares all on your own. He wasn’t there to turn to. He left you to exist by yourself, to figure it all out without his hand there to take. “No,” you repeat, with more resolve this time, “but it was nice of you to come all this way.”

He looks—disappointed, maybe. His eyes narrow slightly, mouth pulling tight, but it’s such a small expression that it could be missed by someone that doesn’t watch him the way you do. He’s smiling again before you know it, easy and wide. Something about him seems farther away even though he’s still got his arms on either side of you, so close that you could reach out and put your entire palm on his chest. “You needed me,” he says. “Of course I was gonna come to you.”

You needed me . Had it been need? Or was it a want so bone-deep that the two feelings could easily be confused, switched out for one another? “Stay while I finish my tea.”

The laugh this receives is small, warm. Pleased at your command. He raises two fingers to his temple, flicks his wrist in a lazy mock-salute. “Yes, ma’am. Permission to move you to the couch so you can sit comfortably?” When he lowers his hand, it doesn’t return to the countertop. He spreads it across your thigh, graceful fingers splayed down the side, thumb lightly moving back and forth across the top. Skin to skin. You only really wear shorts and large shirts to sleep—his shirts. You hadn't even thought about it. It's just something you started doing after he died, after all of his surviving belongings from the DAA were parceled up and sent to you. His hand is so big that you feel a little breathless looking at it against your leg, swallowing up space so effortlessly. 

There’s no way he doesn’t feel this too. You know that. You know it more now than you did at nineteen, with his gentle hands holding your face. There’s something there, undeniable, that sits between the two of you. You love him. Of that much, you’re sure. But you don’t know what it means coupled with the heat you feel underneath your skin every time he touches you, with the heaviness of his gaze when he looks at you this close.

He could want everything from you. He could want nothing. You really wouldn’t know. He’s always kept his cards too close to the chest, even when you were begging him to show his hand.

“Permission granted, soldier.” You don’t do a very good job of hiding the way you’re feeling, but he doesn’t call you on it. Just smiles, smiles, smiles, quiet and smug and satisfied. 

The hand on your thigh loops beneath your legs, and he gives you a squeeze, as if to say: this is what the touch was for. There was a purpose to it. I knew you were going to let me carry you. Innocent, see? Just like everything else I do. Like the way he pulled away from you when you were nineteen, leaning into his touch. His Evol takes the mug from your hands, steadily allows your tea to follow the two of you to the couch. He floats it back over to you when you’re comfortable, the tendrils of his power slick against your hands.

It used to scare you when you were little. The feel of it—like oil floating in water, and your hands passing through it. But you got used to it after a while. It was comforting, gentle. His Evol, in its iridescence and its softness, was something you considered beautiful. Something you still consider beautiful. You would never tell him this because it’s maybe the oddest thing you can think about an innate, intangible power.

“Sit,” you tell him. Pat the couch next to you. He does as you ask and you melt into his side, comforted by his familiar scent, his gentle warmth. His dress shirt is scratchy beneath your cheek. You wish it wasn’t there, that your face could lie against his chest skin-to-skin, that you could feel his heartbeat solidly in the place where you’re connected to him.

His arm curls behind you, hand smoothing down your hair. With his long, graceful fingers, he traces your hairline, the curve of your ear, the line of your neck. Then his touch trails back up the way it came. Again and again, until you could imagine that there was nothing more to existence than this. “Sure you don’t want me to stay?”

“You work early.”

“Doesn’t matter,” he says. Presses his lips to the crown of your head, breathes in deeply. His voice is serious, but the serious you like—where he wants to express that he cares. Needs you to know that even though he teases about a lot of things, he doesn’t tease about this. “If you don’t mind me leaving early, I’m all yours.”

It’s selfish, you know. But Caleb has always seemed to encourage that. Has always seemed to want you to be selfish with his time, with the things he can give you. “You can’t take up the whole bed,” you say. A decision. An easier thing to say than yes, stay here, and since you’ll be here, please hold me while I sleep .

“I’ll shrink myself down,” he tells you. You can feel him smile against your hair—or maybe you’re imagining the feeling, but regardless, you know it to be true. He always smiled when you asked him to sleep next to you. Grinned wide before telling you that there’s nothing he’d like more.

You love the feel of him next to you in bed. Taking up so much space, his power evident in the size of his body, the packed muscle of it. “I want you pocket-sized.”

“What if you crush me in your sleep?”

“Too bad,” you say. “Shouldn’t have been so big in the first place. Then we wouldn’t have to shrink you.”

“Don’t lie to me,” he teases. “You like it.”

Your skin feels hot, clammy. Somehow both. You don’t like how easily he said that, and how easily he’s letting it sit in the silence between you. “No I don’t,” you say, because contesting everything he says is an instinct, something that resides in your bones.

Easily, he plucks you from your seat, Evol carrying your tea to the coffee table. Situates you on the couch between his legs, facing away from him. Allowing you, at least, the mercy to not have to look at him right now. He wraps his arms around you, pulls you back against his powerful chest. His arms are so long that he can loop the width of you with just one. Your head slips easily under his chin, and you’re so contained—so protected by him that you feel like you could suffocate. One hand comes up to cup your face—the one you haven’t claimed with your ring-finger scar. It’s colder than the rest of him, even though you keep your apartment at a pretty reasonable temperature. Or maybe it’s your face, burning, too hot against his unflustered touch.

“I said don’t lie. You like that I can hold you like this,” he says. Brushes his thumb over the skin right below your bottom lip. “Am I right?”

When you were younger, he’d wrap you up in his arms like this when you were having a panic attack. Held you so close that it felt like you were a part of him. No longer an external body—his veins connected to yours, your hearts beating in tandem. You loved it. Sometimes you asked him to do this when you weren’t even having a panic attack—you just wanted him so close that it felt like your edges were blending together. You stay quiet, because there’s no way you can tell him this. No way you’d want to.

“You don’t have to say it.” He holds you for a few more moments, arms firm yet gentle. The way he breathes out makes it sounds like he’s relieved, like there was something weighing on him that he couldn’t let go of until he had you in his hold. “I couldn’t do this if I was pocket-sized, though. So maybe we skip the shrinking for tonight?”

“Fine,” you say. “Take me to bed?” The way you say this—is it on purpose or not? You couldn’t tell him if he asked. You won’t even let yourself know. It has an effect, though. 

His arms tighten around you slightly, a little too firm to be classified as gentle anymore. His breathing goes from relieved to something heavier. “How could I say no to that?”

You wonder if he sees it too. The weight beneath the words. No, that’s not right—it’s not a case of whether he sees it, because it’s impossible to ignore. You’re not nineteen anymore, and he’s not twenty-two. 

The weight is there. The feelings are there. And you’re terribly sure that there will come a point, sooner than later, where you’ll both have to decide what those feelings are.

˚✧ ﾟ.

It’s not until you’re sleeping that he allows himself to really let his mind wander. He tries to be good—really, he does, but you make it difficult. He just loves you so deeply that some days he can’t breathe, the feeling taking up so much space in his body that there’s no room for air. 

So many things are endearing about you. Your first instinct after a nightmare being to call him. His clothes all neatly folded in their own drawers in your closet, like you’ve been keeping a space for him to come back to all this time. The way you wanted him to stay so badly that he could hear it in every word you said, even when you were telling him to go home. 

Sometimes you say things that make him so hard he can’t see straight. He could take you to bed, just like you asked—he could lie you out and worship you, he could show you just how much he loves you with actions instead of words. 

He thinks about the way you taste so often that he could be jailed for it. Would you like that—his head between your thighs, praising you? For him to be gentle, loving, to ready you with his tongue before he does something even worse? He imagines you saying his name while he’s inside of you and he has to pull away from you a little, hold his jaw tightly with his mechanical hand. 

A little pressure, a little punishment. (You’re disgusting. You’re disgusting.) There’s a nonzero chance he could finish untouched just from thinking about you like this. He feels so guilty when he gets this way, especially when you’re in such close proximity, basically still in his arms. It’s a betrayal of trust. 

If you woke up and he was fully awake, ridiculously hard in nothing but a pair of sweats—how would he even justify that to you? He could make you feel so good, though. He could learn your body so quickly, figure you out like he always does—but he doesn’t know if you would want that. And the guilt, the idea of you trusting him to be a good man, and him beside you, thinking about the things he would do for you if you’d just let him—

More important than anything physical is the fact that he doesn’t want you in that way only. If he were to finally have you, he’d need to have all of you. A taste isn’t enough. He wants you to be his and happy about it. He wants to be the only guy you text and the only person you come home to and the only man to whom you ever say I love you . 

Your brow furrows in your sleep, delicate. He moves his hand from his face to yours. Cold metal and grafted skin. Another part of him, gone. This and all the gaps in his head. He doesn’t feel like the Caleb that was yours anymore and it scares him because that’s all he wants to be. 

Despite the fact that he can’t feel your skin against his palm, despite the inorganic nature of what he’s becoming, his touch seems to quiet you. Your face evens out into an expression that’s so serene that it manages to calm him, too. He could kiss you like this and you wouldn’t even know.

He won’t. He won’t. He’s not a good man. He [                                                                          ]. [                                                                                                                  ]. But he won’t.

Those are the bad thoughts that he can’t control, the ones that sometimes leap out of nowhere. He doesn’t know if he had them before, but even if he did, they were never this bad. Never this [                                                                                                 ], intent on breaking your trust so he can take something he wants. 

What he really wants is you safe, always. Even from him.

He settles for cradling your head with his hand, pulling you closer so he can kiss your hairline, smell the shampoo you use, feel the texture of your hair against his lips. It’s enough. So much more than enough when he’s almost positive that he’ll never be able to have what he actually wants.

He’s not unaware of your feelings. He sees the way you look at him, sometimes. Notices the way you react to his touch, his words when he speaks to you in certain tones. But if he tried something and found out you only wanted him physically, he thinks that he would die. 

You breathe out deep, melt further into his embrace. He would die for sure. He can’t live without you. He can’t do this without you. He thinks of what he has to do for Ever, the [                                                                                        ] and the people he’s killed and the [                                                             ]. Guilt is something he knows the way he knows his favorite gun. Muzzle to his temple, finger on the trigger. He would die. You wouldn’t forgive him if you knew some of the things he’s done since leaving you. You’re barely forgiving him now. 

It’s all for you. He just wants you to live. 

There are tears on his face again. His head aches so painfully, so deeply that it feels like he’ll never know a reality where it doesn’t. His breathing is too shallow, and his hand is maybe a little too tight on your hair, and he can’t [                                                          ] he can’t, he can’t, it’s [                                                                                                                          ] and he hates it, he hates [                                                                                   ], [                                                                                          ]—

“Caleb?” you ask, groggy, and he fucked up. (Don’t swear in front of her. Be a good example.) Thought too much. Burnt up too much of his brain. Woke you up when you need rest, when all he wants to do is provide you with what you need and he failed even at that. “Hey—oh my god, Caleb —what’s wrong?”

Your hands are on his face and you’ve felt the tears. It’s dark in your room. The lighting outside isn’t great—something he’s noticed while taking care of you, something he doesn’t like about your apartment. He doesn’t have the breath in his lungs to tell you he wasn’t crying, that there’s nothing to worry about. (She’s gonna think you’re weak.) He hates that you’re seeing him like this.

“Look at me. Hey, please—please look at me.” You’re sitting up now, both hands on his face urging him to look at you, and he can’t.

He can’t. You shouldn’t see him like this. His head hurts so much and you shouldn’t know that he gets like this. Because he’s here to comfort you , to protect you , and now you’re worried over him , and what if you don’t call him next time? “I’m okay,” he says, and the pain is still splitting him apart. His vision is blurred at the edges.

“You’re not,” you say, voice gone a little hard. “Caleb—this is an order. Look at me.”

There’s not a chance he can ever disoblige when you order him to do something. When you tell him plainly: I’m commanding you, and you’re in a position where you’re supposed to listen. It’s addicting, hearing that solid edge to your voice. It’s irresistible. 

You’re worried. He has worried you. His vision feels a little more solid when he looks at you, his breathing suddenly evening out. His brain still pounds against his skull, but he can bear it. You’re so gorgeous when you’re worried about him. All the time, in fact. He’s never seen anyone prettier—doesn’t believe it’s possible.

His hands go to your wrists. They’re so small in his grasp. He can wrap a hand around one and still have room in his grip to spare. Taking a deep breath is easier in your hold. It makes him feel infinitely more grounded. “I’m fine. This looks way worse than it is.”

“What happened?”

He debates telling you. Debates it heavily. Before, he didn’t because it was for your protection. Close to the Farspace Fleet, close to Ever. If they got their hands on you, found out you knew too much about the chip in his head, wiping out pieces of him in a steady stream—he doesn’t want to know what they’d do to you. (Remember what they did to her when you were younger? When you didn’t protect her?) “Bad dream,” he lies. Tries to laugh it off, despite the way light pulses in his vision along to the beat of the drums in his head. “What are the chances, huh?”

You’re primed not to believe him, and he can’t blame you for that. There’s so much he’s keeping from you. He was dead for months before he was able to come back to you. Of course your first instinct would be to not trust him.

But it’s a palatable excuse, something that makes sense in context. It’s not like he doesn’t get bad dreams. He rarely sleeps anymore without something terrible projecting itself in his mind—and alongside it, you: the way you looked at him right before he walked back into the house, before the explosion cracked his body open like one of the pomegranates he used to buy you every year in early autumn. You loved the taste, hated the way the seeds got stuck in your teeth.

“Do you wanna talk about it?” you ask. Your hands go from his face to the sides of his neck, fingers curling into the hair at his nape. A reassuring caress. He’s going to think about this touch for weeks— months to come, and you have no idea.

In another life, you could be his, and this could be you about to kiss him. In another life, you both could have avoided the trauma of your childhoods. In another life, he could simply be yours in any way you would have him, and it would be so much more than enough.

“No,” he says, but kindly. You understand. The dreams sometimes feel more real if they’re spoken aloud. He pulls you back to him so you’re once again in his arms—and this is the most unbelievable part of his lie. Because how could he ever sleep poorly with you beside him like this? “You need your rest. And I’ll be okay. Just gotta hold you tighter.”

You don’t respond—instead snake your arms around him, hold him close against you. (Closer. Please get closer.) As if wordlessly promising that you won’t let it happen again. That you’ll protect him from his bad dreams.

He’s the one that’s supposed to protect you. You should never have to worry about him like this. But it’s late, and he’s tired and his head hurts, and you’re so warm against him.

“Love you,” you tell him, and he knows in what way you mean it.

“I love you, too.” The way he says it to you is different, because it always has been.

˚✧ ﾟ.

Your hands are shaking the entire train ride to Skyhaven. The past hour: Caleb returning home after a reunion lunch with Gideon, his roommate and co-pilot at the DAA; the Wanderer attack on the Coelum Express that almost ripped the entire train apart; calling Caleb ten times back-to-back and only getting voicemail.

There were no casualties. That’s what the news report said. But he wasn’t picking up his phone, so he must have been injured, and that’s what made you call Gideon. All you really took from that phone call was badly hurt, wouldn’t go to the hospital. You were on the next train to Skyhaven without thinking.

You have to pay for a private passenger plane to take you to Caleb’s home, and everything is taking too long. It’s been nearly an hour since you and Gideon talked on the phone. By the time you make it to his house, you can’t sit still—you’re vibrating out of your skin, you’ve texted Caleb more times than seems sane.

His home is empty when you let yourself in. Quiet. You immediately switch to investigative mode—your hand drifting towards your holstered gun as if you’re going to find a threat in his home that he’s been hiding in closets, in the wedges of darkness behind open doors. Maybe it’s not a Wanderer lurking within his home, but he’s definitely been hiding something from you—in his living room, one panel of his wall is slightly ajar, and from your vantage point, you can see a room inside. The soft glow of machines, the sound of pained breaths.

What you find makes you feel sick. 

Caleb, sitting on a table in the middle of the room, his arm—a mechanical limb, metal and bunched wires and deep red lights—plugged into the machines you could see from his living room. It can’t be right. You saw him today. You touched his skin today, pinched the meat of his palm hard between your fingers. Real and rough and a little clammy. Nervous from you being so close, you had thought. Hoped, more like.

“What’re you doing here, pip?” he asks—not even turning to look at you, not even offering you an expression asking for forgiveness—and he has the gall to sound bashful. Oh, this? Just my prosthetic arm. Don’t look, it’s not proper. 

You’re going to kill him. You’re going to kill him.

You’re so angry you can’t speak. Your hands are balled into uncomfortable fists at your side, and you stalk across the room, your body moving faster than your head can keep up with. Your face is hot, everything bubbling up inside you, feelings rolling into a boil. When you’re standing in front of him, you get a good, full look at what has replaced the arm he used to carry you with, that even today he used to pull you into a hug. Fingers that tugged at the ends of your hair, still obsessed with its new length. His skin had felt so real. “What is this?”

He laughs, a little self-deprecating. “Not my best look.”

“Your best look?” You’re going to kill him. You’re going to strangle him with his own fucking arm. “You’re worried about optics right now? About whether you’re—” You have to cut yourself off, have to put a fist in front of your mouth in case you need to bite something. “I can’t believe you.”

“I wanted to tell you,” he says. Which means he knows he should have, knows that you wouldn’t appreciate something like this being kept from you. But he did it anyway.

You’re so tired. So tired of being angry at him. So tired of finding out something else and having everything you’ve built between you since his death crumble. How many times are you going to have to restart with him? Fatigue fills you like lead, your body heavy, your legs so exhausted that standing feels like effort. Your face is hot, your eyes welling with tears—and you hate that it’s not even because you’re still grieving. It’s not because you’re sad. You’re tired . You’re so tired you want to cry.

He panics when he sees tears, like he always used to. He unplugs his arm from the machines, reaches towards you. You can hear the metal joints clink against each other when he moves. “I’m sorry. Oh, baby, I’m sorry. Come over here—please?”

It’s hard to resist him when he calls you that. A weakness planted within you when you almost got everything you had ever wanted at nineteen. You let him wrap you up in his arms, the metal cold even through your clothes. So at odds with his overly-hot skin. He’s always run warm. You loved sitting on the porch with him in late summer, watching the leaves turn, listening to the cicada-buzz that would soon quiet once it got too cold. That’s what you think about when you think of warmth—his arms around you, holding you just the way you liked, and the way you felt close but never felt that it was close enough. 

“I’m not crying because of you,” you tell him.

He’s quiet for a second. “It’s okay if you are.”

“I’ve cried over you enough. This is just—I’m tired.” And maybe it’s the exhaustion that allows you to relax into him. To take the comfort he offers you so freely. Nothing you’ve felt since his return has been small. Everything has been so large: relief, anger, fear. Too big to process quickly. Your body is tired from trying to keep up. Your mind has been tired since he closed the door behind him and left you outside your childhood home. “Tell me why you kept this from me,” you say. “At least that.”

He’s quiet. Keeps holding you, his large hand cradling the back of your head. “It’s complicated.”

A strangled, frustrated noise comes from your chest. “I don’t care if it’s complicated.”

“It’s dangerous for you to know too much.”

You try to pull back but he doesn’t let you. You know you could turn this conversation your way if you could just look him in the eyes. When you were little and Caleb said no to you, all it took were some strategically placed pouts and extended eye contact to get him to break. 

Unfortunately, he knows your tactics just as well as you. He’s not going to let you have the upper hand without a fight. 

“You can’t keep telling me it’s dangerous without telling me who I’m in danger from,” you say. Maybe appealing to logic will work. “Is it the Fleet? Is it the DAA? At least let me know who my enemy is so I can protect myself.”

“I’m protecting you,” he says, “so you don’t have to worry yourself about all that. No one’s gonna put a hand on you unless they want to lose it.”

The words make you shiver. There’s a warmth you feel at his insistence on protecting you—but also something a little more hair-raising. The sensation of being one step removed from control, like you’re in the cockpit but don’t have a say in where the plane is taking you. 

When you pull away this time, he lets you. Because he thinks you’ve accepted his protection, thinks that you’re done asking questions. You’ll stay away from the big ones for now. You can catch him at a time when he’s less emotionally guarded. Less prone to defend because he’s been caught in a vulnerable position. You reach out to his new arm—pause, checking his reaction, waiting for him to stop you. 

He doesn’t. It seems like he wants you to touch. Wants you to reconcile that this is a part of him now that he can’t remove. 

The metal is cold, even as there’s a slight buzz when your fingertips ghost across exposed wiring. The touch is a caress. You can’t help it—even with the unfamiliarity of the metal, the shock that came with seeing it, you can never touch him with anything other than love. This is a part of him. “Can you feel this?”

“No,” he says, and he sounds devastated at that fact. He captures your fingers with his metal hand—cold and constricting. Nothing like the touch of the boy you knew in childhood. “I can feel pressure because it’s necessary. I can feel pain.”

Metal fingers the color of tungsten bullets. Darker than regular steel. Better for large artillery weapons because it can shred other metals easily. “...is that necessary, too?”

He doesn’t answer. Instead, moves your hand over his heart, presses your palm to his chest. The way he closes his eyes and breathes out when he can finally feel your touch again—you couldn’t call it anything other than relieved. “Couldn’t wait ‘til tomorrow to see me?” he asks, teasing. Deflecting. “Missed me that bad?”

“Caleb,” you say. Will calling him on his hollow defense make anything better? Will it make him tell you anything you actually want to know? It would have, before. He would have crumbled in an instant, told you everything.

Or maybe that’s what he tricked you into thinking when you were younger. Part of you has come to believe that he’s always kept secrets from you. That he’s always been very good at convincing you that he tells you everything.

Instead of asking what you want to know, you say, “Your arm was… normal earlier.”

He nods. “Go wait for me in the living room. I’ll show you. And then we can go to bed, okay?”

If it’ll give you any sort of answers, you’ll easily do what he asks. You only sit for a few minutes before he comes out and joins you, still shirtless but different—his arm as it was when he came to Linkon to see you. Flesh and blood, by all appearances.

He joins you on the couch and your reaction is instant, your hands wrapping around his forearm, pulling him closer to you. The cold—you still feel it, but it’s muted by the skin. Everything feels so real, so soft beneath your fingers. His arm still has a fine layer of dark hair that it always did. You turn his hand in yours, palm up, and trace the vein that runs from his wrist to the crook of his elbow. You can feel the ridge of it, the slight warmth—but not his pulse, you realize. 

You drop his hand, pull away. The difference makes you feel lightheaded. 

“It’s a skin graft,” he tells you. “They grew it from my cells.”

“So you have to… put it on?”

He grimaces at that. “Yeah, it’s not pretty. But don’t worry. Not gonna make you see that.”

You can’t help yourself—after your brief dizziness subsides, you take his arm between your hands again, turn it over for inspection. He still has a scar on the knuckle of his thumb. A bad fall on the asphalt of your neighborhood park’s basketball court. You remember him coming home bleeding, promising you he was alright even as he looked close to tears. He must have been twelve, maybe thirteen. You smooth your thumb over the scar just to feel its smoothness, the way you used to when you were younger. “How do you still have this?”

He shrugs, then must notice how much this response seems to frighten you—the idea of someone creating this elaborate sleeve of skin for him and somehow knowing his scars as intimately as he did. As you did. “I asked for it,” he tells you. “I wanted everything to be… right.”

“Right how?”

“I liked the way it was before,” he says. Shrugs too nonchalantly, enough that you know he’s lying. One of his bad tells. “Call it vanity.”

There is a stone in your throat. “Did you want it to be identical because you wanted to keep it a secret from me?”

He shakes his head emphatically. The way he used to when you were younger and you asked him the important questions. Do you think my bad dreams could come true? Could I die in my sleep if I get too anxious? Are you ever going to leave me? 

He lied about the last one. He could be lying about this. 

Thoughts can never be your own when you’re with Caleb. He knows you too well. Can see it clear that you don’t believe him. “No. I was always gonna tell you. I wouldn’t have—no.” 

His large hands curl around your upper arms—an embrace from afar. Not pushing his luck. He considers his words, a pained expression on his face. How much should he reveal? That’s always the framework for how he answers you now and you hate it. You want him to tell you everything because he wants to. Because he can. 

“I didn’t want you to see me differently,” he finally says.

“I wouldn’t,” you say. You can’t stop yourself. You can’t even truly parse that he thinks your opinion of him would change over something so far out of his control. “I don’t.”

He laughs at that, but it’s hollow. You both know why. Of course you see him differently now. Not because of the arm—but everything else. It’s impossible not to. His hands tighten on your arms just a little, and you wonder how careful he has to be with his prosthesis. Whether its power matches his natural strength, or if its capabilities go far beyond. 

“I would’ve known, anyway,” you say. Touching him feels paramount to everything else. Your fingers have to keep running up the expanse of lab-grown skin to find all its incongruencies with the Caleb you once knew. 

“Yeah?” he asks. Keeps his eyes on your fingers and their hesitant touch. A trick of sound, maybe: his breath coming shallow and shaky. 

The skin of his shoulder is smooth under your hand. There’s no seam—no obvious place where the grafted skin meets the natural—but the curve just above his underarm is soft in a way it hasn’t been since early childhood. “Your stretch marks are gone,” you say, and you sound like you miss them because you do. Because you liked the evidence of him growing up beside you, of his skin struggling to keep up during his initial growth spurt, and then later, after high school, when he started putting on muscle at the DAA at a rate that seemed too fast for you to comprehend. One winter vacation, he came home and he was suddenly big. Shoulders wide in a way you wouldn’t have associated with Caleb before then.

“Didn’t realize you were paying such close attention,” he says. Takes your hand in his once again, moves it from inorganic to organic. The stretch marks on his other shoulder, jagged white lines that spear up to the curve of his arm from the very top of his bicep. Proof that he’s real. “I still have these ones.”

There’s a long moment where you just allow yourself to touch him. Where his hands around your arms go slack, feeling you instead of holding you. The both of you sitting together, mesmerized by skin touching skin, by details that prove you’re still here. Still the person you’ve always been. 

Your hands go to his face like instinct—because you need to see him. You need to look him in the eye. And he lets you hold his face, nuzzles into your touch, closes his eyes and breathes out heavy and slow, a sound that screams relief. Comfort. He takes one hand in his, skin warm and real against yours, and burrows deeper. Like he can live in your hold, a ship come to dock. He looks up at you from beneath his thick lashes, sunset eyes gazing at you fondly. 

It’s like the moment between the two of you on the porch in reverse. Caleb’s face in your hands. His eyes dropping to your lips like he can’t help it. And that same feeling—a deep longing, something you didn’t understand at nineteen but that you can define now. You love him in a different way than you loved him growing up. 

Your breaths come shaky, just like his. Standing at this precipice is frightening but familiar. Comforting the way only a freefall can be: regardless of what happens along the way, you’re going to hit the ground. 

But not now. Maybe you’re a coward for pulling away, for creating a little more space. Maybe it’s self-preservation. Maybe one of those things is innate to the other, and whatever category you fall into has a piece of both.

He understands, like always—now is the time to diffuse the tension. Now is the time for things to go back to normal. He allows your hands to slip from his face—but does do one thing differently. He holds your palm to his cheek for a moment longer than normal, and before he lets it go, his lips ghost across your palm. A small kiss. A token of something like affection. 

Your hands are shaking when you get them back. Balling them into fists in your lap makes this easier to ignore.

“Why’d you come visit, pip?” he asks. Pulls at the ends of your hair, annoying, with a little grin on his face. The spitting image of the boy you grew up with, now a man with secrets. “Not that I’m complaining.”

“I heard about what happened on the Coelum. There were injuries, and you weren’t picking up your phone…”

“I’m sorry,” he says, genuine. Like always. Even if he lies to you, no matter how bad things get, you’re somehow positive that he would never apologize to you if he didn’t mean it. “I should’ve sent a text, but I didn’t think you’d hear about it ‘til tomorrow.”

“It was on the news. But I probably wouldn’t have known for sure it was your train that was attacked if I didn’t call Gideon.”

He doesn’t respond immediately. Sometimes you forget that Caleb is a trained weapon, that his body looks the way it does for more than just his own aesthetic reasons. The way he tenses puts you on edge, similar to how you feel when someone holding a gun turns the safety off—but you know he wouldn’t hurt you. You’re just surprised that his reaction is this. He clears his throat, like that’ll displace any of the strained emotion you can hear in his voice when he speaks. “You have his number? I didn’t realize you two were that close.”

“We’re not,” you say, shrugging. “We—after you… died, we—he was at the funeral.”

“After I died, you… what?” This is the kind of cold you hear when Caleb is being the Colonel. Not the kind of cold he is with you. Well—the kind he never was with you. He’s always been the warmest person you know. A ray of sunshine, an endearing dork with a handsome face, the life of whatever party he was invited to. 

It scares you when he’s like this. Whatever might have physically changed about him—his new arm, the replicated scars and the ones left only in memory—if it was to placate you, it would never work. Not when he’s capable of being like this. Talking to you with this tone of voice, the way he never used to.

“We talked a little,” you say. “It was hard to deal with alone.”

He rubs at his temple with his inorganic hand—the pressure turns his skin white, leaves a small red mark behind on his forehead after. He swallows, seems to calm himself. “I’m glad you had someone that understood,” he says, and his voice is almost back to normal. Like he’s forcing himself to get there but not quite reaching. “Gideon’s a really great guy. And he’s always known how important you are to me.”

“He told me the way you used to talk about me at school.” There were so many things you’d never known. That Caleb kissed the tag of the necklace you’d given him before every flight, that he kept a framed picture of you on his desk and a polaroid of you in his wallet, that it got to a point where he would talk about you so much at parties that it would scare girls off for the other guys, that they started begging him to stay at the dorms or shut up about you just for one night. “It helped.”

“I’m glad he didn’t forget about me when you guys were talking.” He still sounds tense. Still sounds cold. 

And maybe this is too much of a presumption. But you know it’s not. Really, deep down, you know that even if Caleb doesn’t want you in the way you want him, he wants you in some capacity. He’s a man, despite everything. Quietly, you say, “Caleb. I didn’t sleep with him.”

He inhales sharp, quick. His jaw tightens. He looks cornered, so surprised and alarmed that you’ve breached this territory that neither of you are brave enough to cross into. Slowly, he unravels himself. Loosens his muscles, becomes more like a man than a weapon. “And you didn’t…?”

“We didn’t do anything. He was just looking out for me because you weren’t there to do it yourself.”

Slowly, he nods. More to himself than you. Leans back against the couch and presses his thumb and index finger against his eyes, like he’s trying to block out everything. Or keep everything in. “I don’t know what we’re…” He shakes his head. Bites his lip. Then says your name, quiet and heavy.

You can’t do this right now. You can’t confront your feelings. Can’t confront his feelings. Because when it’s finally, plainly revealed to you that Caleb doesn’t love you in the way you love him, you think something within you will dull forever. “We should go to bed.”

When he looks at you—you know what it looks like when Caleb is in pain. You’ve seen it enough in your lifetime. But never pain as deep as this. He says your name again. More insistent.

“Will you sleep with me tonight?”

This stops him, like you knew it would. He can never deny the opportunity to be close to you. To hold you in his arms when you sleep. And it’s more than a bribe to get him to stop moving things into territory you’re not sure you can handle right now. 

You want him close. You want to hold him and know all the parts of him that are holding you. You want to run your fingers over the smooth skin where his stretch marks are supposed to be and allow yourself to come to terms with it.

But you can’t say that out loud. Instead, you gaze up at him—give him that look that always wins arguments. That gets you whatever you want when it comes to him.

You know you’ve won when he sighs and rolls his eyes, unable to stop the corners of his lips from turning up. Maybe he likes it when you ask him for things, or maybe he’s just happy at the prospect of sleeping beside you. It’s something you can’t ask him to tell you. Instead, you follow him to his bedroom and allow yourself to dream of the many things you can’t ask for. The things you’re afraid he’d tell you and the things you’re afraid he wouldn’t.

part two!!

[bkgexe]

been sitting on this caleb fic bc i'll be honest he really brings out the freak in me. and i don't even think i write freaky shit like any smut i've written has been genuinely so very tame. (and tbf this is probably also very tame BUT i just like. am like. i feel like i'm going a little too crazy maybe.) anyway im gonna publish it because then i will be free of him finally i will be able to write other fics. bakugou i miss you baby i'm coming home soon

[bkgexe]

guard dog bf who gets hard over you bringing him to heel.

[bkgexe]

Guy who is touch starved but emotionally repressed goading you into punching him for completely normal reasons

[bkgexe]

Naruto has done more for our culture as a whole than the Beatles ever have.

[bkgexe]

caleb getting all the more turned on when you give him a blowjob for the first time and use a little bit of your teeth …. because it only means you haven’t done this to anyone else before …. you get a pat on the head along with a throaty groan out of him . that’s a relief, your mouth will only know one cock

[bkgexe]

What about the original Xbox controller?

i didnt appreciate you when you were still with us. im sorry. im so fucking sorry. you are the pearl ouster of the shinest sea. ypu are the light in my creepy cove. darling sweet sugarpot

[bkgexe]

is a man trying not to cum the second he enters you hot or not